


Walk Through Shadow

by skorpsion



Category: DragonFable (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2019-10-06 06:15:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17340098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skorpsion/pseuds/skorpsion
Summary: Title subject to change.The end of the world is just how it all began.





	1. Chapter 1

Two figures sat on a thatched rooftop, watching the end of the world. It was named Uthuluc, something made of tentacles and chitin, and it was angry. The rest of Falconreach was either gone or going, but they were safe on their little rooftop for the moment. Dragon faintly remembered the name, from when he first met Aegis, but had never actually seen the thing in the material plane. It was somehow bigger than he remembered, and angry enough to break through any attack sent its way. Aegis only looked on, pensive.

“I don't know how he got free,” he'd said. The ice was meant to last a hundred years, and it hadn't even been one. “Maybe some new spirit was messing with the ice, or Pandora got near it again, or…”

It didn't really matter now, though. No one could get near it- not the Guardians, not the Dragonlords, not even Dragon himself, although that was only because Aegis pulled him back just in time. Those who tried were simply sucked into its maw, like everything else around it.

The whole world was ending, and Dragon couldn't do a thing to stop it.

Maybe in the Plane of Elemental Spirits, it could be stopped. In the material world, though, material attacks wouldn't faze it, and everything they threw at it disappeared into its maw or bounced off its impregnable chitin. Aegis had tried sending ice at it, more than once, and all he had to show for his efforts was a hairline crack, barely noticeable, before it was too dangerous to even approach the surrounding nonexistence.

“So this is the end,” Dragon mused. It was creeping up, closer and closer, and while they could probably still flee Falconreach now, what good would that be, if the rest of the world would disappear as well? It would just go faster and faster, and this way… at least this way, they could be together before the end.

“... I kind of expected the end of the world to be another giant dragon.”

Aegis chuckled, and reached a metaphorical hand out. Dragon accepted it, synchronizing to each other’s souls one last time. He could feel his soulally’s melancholy, his own sadness, and… determination. The same iron will they both shared, mingled in a way that he couldn’t tell whose it was.

“I know of a way,” Aegis had said, whispered half into his ear, half through their bond. “I know how to make it all stop.”

“You do?”

It wasn’t something he said aloud. It wasn’t something Dragon ever wanted to hear, ever wanted to even consider, but the thrumming in their bond was an absolute surety. In a single terrible moment, Dragon understood the enormity of what Aegis meant by that statement.

The world around was cracking, splintering at the seams to hold something that was never meant for the material world to see, but that wasn't what he meant. There was destruction, vast parts of the world that just stopped existing, every time a tentacle lashed out, or when Uthuluc took a breath. He could see the colour that the universe took when it didn't exist, in those wounds and bleeding gashes of the world. There was the call of a mad, old god, piercing beyond the veil of reality, and Dragon was vaguely aware his eardrums were probably either bleeding or being corrupted by rot from beyond the void. It wouldn't matter anyway, since the world was ending.

Aegis could stop it all, but the truth rang deeper than that.

The world would be saved, but everything would stop. The natural cycle would be broken, the bond breaking not from a Soulweaver’s death, but his ally. Dragon would be alone again, alone in the way he was before he knew what a Soulweaver was, when he didn't even realize just how solitary his existence was. They wouldn't be able to get around to finally soulweaving a scarf for Tomix to thank him for making Dragon's uniform, or be able to synchronize in heart and soul, or use ice magic in battle, or…

“There has to be another way.”

Aegis smiled at him, in that same way he always did, like he didn't entirely remember what his smile was like as a human but was still trying his best. They desynchronized at once, Dragon still reaching out one last time.

“I'll be with you, always.”

And they were out of time already, Uthuluc's maw dissolving reality's seams and the nothingness creeping up to their little safe spot on the Falconreach inn's roof, and there wasn't even time for a goodbye.

He screamed Aegis's name, desperate, although he probably hadn't heard it. And then there was light.

Up to the end, he didn't know exactly what Aegis was doing. It was only the next time he opened his eyes, when the sky was blue and the sun was shining like nothing happened, that he understood. Nothing had happened at all, nobody remembered being unmade by the maw of a being from another plane, nobody knew the sacrifice made that was the reason they all still existed. Dragon was the only one in the whole world who knew, and there was an aching, gaping emptiness in him to show for it.

That was the first time.

There was an imbalance in the elements. That much was clear. Something was disrupted, between destroying the Ultimate Orb and killing… well, killing a lot of dragons. Whatever the reason, traveling to the Elemental Foothills was more dangerous than ever before, and there was little reason to do so, given how Warlic went missing.

In the Foothills, and even everywhere else, there was unrest. The elementals were more volatile than ever, and using elemental magic was… unreliable, at best. Lightning and Nature magic would overload, Dark would sputter out, and half the time, trying to balance even small amounts of different elemental magic together would result in an unfortunate explosion. Trying to use Fire at all gave Dragon a sense of dread, for some reason, so he didn't even try. The few pyromancers he knew seemed to have disappeared, so it was probably better to stay on the safe side.

Dragon hadn't had reason to rely on his regular magic in a long, long time, but that was off-balance, too, for multiple reasons. Aegis was gone, gone with any ability of being a Soulweaver, so he hung up the uniform. It would seem that once again, he was an ordinary mage.

He'd considered traveling to the Plane of Elemental Spirits again, to fill the void in his soul, but that would just be trying to replace Aegis, wouldn't it? There probably wouldn't be an Elemental Spirit in the entire world willing to bond with him, knowing what happened to his previous soulally. There was still a yawning, empty ache deep inside him, a bond that led to absolutely nowhere, the last trace left in the whole world that Aegis had been with him.

At least he still had Human, reliable and always hungry. He begged for treats constantly, but Dragon couldn't imagine turning him down.

There were whispers of another magic, something that didn't rely on the elements, that would grant untold power. It seemed like everyone was uneasy, even after the giant sun-eating dragon was dead. There was really no pleasing some people. Still, nothing was happening, and while he was on edge, Dragon couldn't afford to wait around for a villain to inevitably show up. He had his own skills to sharpen up, after spending so long working with Aegis. He couldn’t soulweave anymore, and now it was like he went back to the beginning of his journey, back when he had only a few spells to his name and no real feats to speak of.

Maybe it started with Aegis and the battle that never was, but Dragon wished he could have at least seen the problem then.

When he first saw the issue, it was weeks later. He didn't even know it was a problem until one day, while questing with Human along, that he saw something from Beyond. It wasn't from Lore, wasn't even something from the Void, it was something unmistakably Other, summoned by a mad two-bit villain. Its anatomy contorted in euclidean geometry, grotesque and exposed cross sections of not-organs intersecting each other in directions that didn't exist. It growled like a rabid beast, a sort of shredding, grating sound. It was like nothing else in all of Lore- unnatural, wrong, and completely, utterly Other. Dragon didn't even remember anything about the villain, or anything at all, until it was dead and the villain was long gone. Its organs were spilled across the floor, phased halfway into the floor, sideways into the ceiling when he came to. He ran through the dungeon, through the traps and the skeletons, until he was at last outside, panting and shaken.

It was almost like a fevered dream, coming out to the open sky again, and he almost, _almost_ convinced himself it hadn’t been real. Except it had happened again, and again, and again.

Dragon didn't know how he missed it, but after the first one, they were everywhere. It almost seemed like no one was practicing normal elemental magic anymore, they were all trying to summon dragons from the edge of the void or use the power of a human soul to destroy the continent, or drain people of blood to ascend to infinite power. Every time he looked, there was something new, and not in the good way.

Even worse, the things were there. They were like monsters, but they weren't really the monsters everyone knew. They were just… Other. They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes and unshapes, but there was always an unnatural quality to them, the whisper of being against the natural order. Worse, it seemed there were more and more of them. They would attack people randomly, and while usually those people would be trying to take over the world, day by day there seemed to be more innocent people going about their day who were attacked by them. They were hard to kill, too, and Dragon sometimes felt like he was like a little 2D stick person trying to kill 3D monsters, which maybe he was, from their perspective. Still, near no one else was killing them, and there was no time to mourn.

The unrest had practically boiled over into full-on riots. Entire swathes of forest and land were destroyed, ravaged by elementals attacking both each other and the Other creatures. There was an entire city, shrouded eternally in night, somewhere to the south, and Dragon knew he needed to go there eventually to figure out what was going on, but there was already so much to do. The Elemental Orbs were gone, the giant Super Mega Ultra Darkness Dracolich was dead, but the world was still in turmoil.

Not even days later, Human was gone.

It happened too fast, like everything else these days. But… Human was gone. Human, the dragon he’d raised from an egg, who accepted the name and found it just as funny as he did. He was supposed to outlive Dragon by thousands of years, he was the one with the now-fulfilled ancient prophecy to destroy the world, and now, he was gone.

If Dragon thought losing Aegis was like losing part of his very soul, losing Human was like having every last light in his life extinguished.

Human was no more, and now, there was an aberration shaped like a dragon in his place. It roared, if a roar could sound like the buzz of a thousand bees with tentacles instead of stingers, and it took flight on twelve and a half wings that all folded into each other to occupy the same space. Seeing it was even worse, now that he knew where so many of the Other things came from, and he knew what he had been fighting all along. Gaining the knowledge was hard enough, and even knowing it now was a torture, after the loss of so many lives from the accursed research- the lives of not only the experiments, but also the magus researchers studying them.

Something had nicked Human, gotten past all his scales and fire, and left a tiny, unchecked infection incubating inside of him. Every subsequent exposure let it develop from an infection to a fever, and from a fever to… well, whatever it was when someone stopped existing and was just entirely replaced by the illness. It rotted Human from the inside out, and he didn't even know until his brain collapsed into itself and refolded into something beyond comprehension.

The thing that was left didn’t recognize its former partner, just lashed out blindly at the world. Human was dead already, and there was only one person who could take down his still-breathing remains.

Dragon didn't have the time to grieve, and he could only do what he had always done.

He fought.

Later, when he walked across the battlefield, Dragon felt entirely numb. Sure, his nerves were burnt out from the backlash of borrowed power and he couldn't quite feel his hands, but that wasn't it.

He was… empty. That was the word. No soulally, no dragon. His friends were still alive, for the moment, but who knew how long that would last? They didn't have any line of defence against giant world ending threats anymore, and the elemental storms were only getting worse. Fire imps were attacking, elementals were raging, and while Dragon would have thought it could have been Xan, all the pyromancers were gone. It had to be something else, something… new. That was probably a bad sign, but it wasn't like he could do anything about it. He had other things to worry about, and even if the world wouldn't give him time to grieve, he'd make his own time. His dragon was dead twice over: once by the affliction, and once by his own hand.

There was probably something festering inside him, now. Even if he couldn't feel it, how many times had he been injured? How many times was he exposed while fighting?

But there was no time to rest, not really. Somewhere in the woods, there were necromancers stealing children, and he had to fight once again, even if he was still grieving for his lost Human.

Maybe that was where the idea started.

It was in Atrea that he started thinking about it. The atealans used their own magic derived from constellations and the stars, even if they couldn't actually go out into the light of day. They offered to teach him, to help him seek his own constellations, but that was just one of many, many alternatives. There were innumerable kinds of magic out there, thousands of different disciplines and sources to choose from. Soulweaving was one, forbidden magic another, and the cosmos another.

Even outside of Atrea, the skies were always dark, these days. Elemental storms were constant, and Wargoth's forces grew bolder every day. Dragon didn't want to know how it looked in Falconreach, but it couldn't be good.

Of course, it wasn't looking good anywhere he went. There were people on the roads now who gave him a wide berth, either because they recognized him as the one who wasn't fixing things, or they didn't, and only saw his mage robes. People were starting to resent magic of all kinds- the foul, forbidden magic that made travel risky and stole away villagers at night, the volatile elemental magic gathering in destructive storms, even the friendly, benign magics usually used to help people. They were calling it the Magic Crisis now, and even if Wargoth was stopped, even if he somehow brought balance back to the elements, things were already at a boil, and Dragon didn't know how to stop it. Maybe he could fight Wargoth, maybe he could calm the Avatars, maybe he could even knock some sense into the small but growing ranks of magic-hating zealots. But telling people as a whole to stop fearing magic? There wouldn't be a way to fight his way out of that.

One thing at a time, though. Maybe the Professor had the answer, and maybe Warlic would come back with a miracle again. If he kept looking, there would be a way out.

He was almost relieved to learn that not everything was a human twisted by the things beyond the void, but discovering monsters implanted with human souls wasn't something to be excited at. He wasn't thrilled to see temporally displaced creatures either, able to strike dozens of times in a single second, but they didn't make his skin crawl as much as the first things he met. There was more than one kind of forbidden magic, and not all magics are equal, after all.

Maybe that was where he stopped thinking of just vague ideas, and started formulating an actual plan.

Every time in the past, Dragon had fought fire with fire. Whatever the bad guys brought out, his was bigger. When the sun went dark and the sky was filled with a dragon bigger than Lore, fuelled by the power of the Ultimate Orb, hadn't he used his own dragon and his own Ultimate Orb? It was obvious that the villains now wouldn't hesitate to burn the world down to ashes using forbidden magic, and if elemental magic and soulweaving and dragons had all failed, well….

It was dark in the war camp when he left, just like always. They were all getting ready for the final confrontation, and Dragon had his own preparations to make. And when he came back, it would be even darker.

Really, he wasn't sure if it was actually forbidden. No one has really done this before, not exactly, even though others had changed the flow of time, himself included. Multiple times.

Either way, he needed something, anything to give him an edge against Wargoth. Lore wouldn't burn, not while he was still standing, and if he did the wrong things for the right reasons… well, so be it. The world was already full of injustices, and this was a sacrifice he could afford to make.

(Aegis had given him the idea, after all.)

If it was that obvious to everyone else (and he knew for a fact it was very, very obvious), at least people at the war camp had the tact to not say anything. Sometimes they shivered when they passed over his Umbra, which he knew for a fact wasn't actually cold at all, but they didn't comment on it. They shot glances at each other, maybe whispered a little in hushed tones, but didn't dare say anything to his face. Even the Professor was taken aback, but didn't ask any of the piercing questions. That was fine by him.

He knew the truth of things now. For each action, a consequence. Everything that happened was part of the timeline, but there was an inverse as well, everything that never happened. When Aegis unwrote history, he made a fracture in time and pushed Uthuluc, as well as himself, into the shadows of time, into the history that never happened. It was almost- _almost_ \- lucky, and he could walk through it as well, since Aegis had already opened the door. The bond in his soul didn’t just lead to nowhere, it led to every nowhere.

He hadn't looked in the mirror yet, but from how people reacted to him, perhaps that was for the better. Forbidden magic had a habit of leaving marks everywhere. Or… maybe it wasn’t really forbidden at all. He didn't know, and didn't really care.

Either way, he was ready for Wargoth, and even if he had to walk to the ends of time itself in shadow, so be it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explanation:  
> Dragon is the name of the hero. (I really don't want to spend DCs on changing it.) Human is the name of the dragon.
> 
> Everything in Book One is the same, but diverges in that Uthuluc escaped its prison a hundred years early and ate its way into the material world. Aegis uses a forbidden magick to erase himself and Uthuluc's attack from the timeline, leaving Dragon without a soulally and unable to use the techniques he relied on. Following this, the elemental imbalance led to most conventional magic becoming unreliable, with pyromancers controlled to do Wargoth’s bidding (although this isn't obvious yet) and many villains choosing to instead mess with forbidden magic. “Other” is a blanket term for any monster created by forbidden magic, which can include anything from soul magic being used to create a monster, to temporally displaced monsters from the past or future, to things from beyond the void like Uthuluc, which are shamelessly and obviously eldritch horrors. (This would include monsters like Yellow from Aspar's experiments, probably most things from pre-Reset, and your friendly local Primordials. It’s a very broad umbrella term, mostly used to apply to anything that seems new and really, really sticks out from most other monsters in the setting.) Human died from a infection, which is created by exposure to certain Others, and there's really no ingame lore basis for this.
> 
> Following this, people start to fear magic in general, since conventional magic is no longer reliable and forbidden magic becoming more and more popular, despite the obvious shortcomings. Before the final confrontation with Wargoth, Dragon decides that since he's already lost everything, he might as well take whatever step is necessary to save the world, and becomes connected to the shadows of the timestream after Aegis already paved the way.
> 
> Is time magic actually forbidden? I don't know, probably not, but it fits well with the idea of things that mankind was never meant to mess with: souls, time, and horrors outside the universe.
> 
> 1/7/2019


	2. Chapter 2

It was cold, colder than he’d ever felt before. He wanted to shiver, but it was like his body wasn't even there.

Up towards the sky, there was a murky, half-filtered light. He tried to inhale, and- couldn't. There was fear, fluttering deep inside, and he started to actually wake up. He wasn't just cold, he was being pressed in on all sides by ice. He couldn't take a breath because there was ice wrapping around his ribcage, and when he wanted to scream, desperately wanted to struggle, there was a wall of ice, all around him, making it impossible to even twitch. The only thing he could see from the outside world was the thin light of the sun that managed to shine through. Everything was cold and sluggish, but it was too cold and cramped to even manage a shiver.

Unable to move. Unable to breathe. Unable to even think in the biting, all-consuming chill.

He wanted to do something, anything, but it was so cold, and the shadows seemed so far away in the light of the sun, that he could only go back to sleep.

There was no way to tell for sure if it was a dream, real life, or just a nightmare, but he opened his eyes, time after time, trying to scream, or fight, or even take a single breath, but he always sunk back down into freezing nothingness, where he still wasn't really sure if he was asleep or awake. There was never time to think, to wonder what he was doing, and in those precious few moments between nothingness, he desperately wished to be able to break just his head from the ice and take a single breath.

There came a day. Well, maybe it wasn't even a day, maybe he'd only been there for hours, at best. There was a day where he was awake, actually, truly awake, and the panic in his lungs didn't translate to air. He was aware, painfully so, of the pins and needles and knives stabbing into his flesh from the chill, of how there was just a little space around his eyes, hollowed out from the ice (melted?), of how he was trapped in a giant cocoon of ice that was going to be his grave. There was pure, animal panic in his mind, and while he tried to dive down into his Umbra, he was trapped, completely immobile. He would have been screaming, if not for how his lungs were burning.

By some miracle of weakness in the ice, he could twitch his fingers- just a little, but enough. Enough to release just a flicker of the energy that swirled around his new- new? How long had it actually been?- home. Just a whisper of the end of time trailed into ribbons, destroying anything in its way. The decay ate through the ice, passing through it in an instant, and the whole thing shattered at once.

Dragon broke free in a glorious crash of ice, and promptly fell to his knees, shivering uncontrollably and gulping down deep breaths of air. “How… how long was I frozen?” His voice cracked unfamiliarly, and as he hugged his (wet) robes closer to himself, he looked up just in time to see the figure of a red dragon streak through the sky, trailing chains and tentacles behind, before it was shot down by arrows. It let out a great bellow, draconic yet distorted, and for a moment, just half a moment-

_-a roar like a buzz, a thousand furious bees with tentacles for stingers_

 

_distorted, corrupted, eaten by infection-_

Dragon was clutching his head in his hands. His inky black hands, so dark he couldn't see the features unless he rotated his wrists and saw the silhouette. Just like the rest of his body, anchored more in the shadows of time than the material world. He stared for a good few moments, before shaking his head and taking another breath of sweet, blessed, air. He had to leave, and the cliff he was on seemed awfully familiar.

Or… he wanted to leave. He turned, and a group of soldiers approached, swords at the ready and chains in their hands.

“Who are you?” Dragon demanded, while they edged closer and closer, like they were hunters cornering a dangerous animal. He backed away, to match their pace.

They didn't respond. One of them didn't have a weapon, and his hands crackled with cyan electricity, making the chain in his hands seem even more ominous than it had before.

“The ice crystal….” One of them said, without even acknowledging Dragon had said anything.

“It's broken. Does that mean…?”

“Standard procedure. Contain it. If we can't, termination is the only option.” The leader was sizing him up with his eyes, which was very, very uncomfortable. They were all dressed in leather armour, a uniform entirely unfamiliar to him, but with the insignia of a red rose. For some reason, Dragon felt like that should have been important.

“Who are you?”

They didn’t respond, only moving closer and closer. Diplomacy would probably be lost on chain-wielding madmen, anyway.

Termination… did not seem like a pleasant prospect. he took another step back, into nothing but empty air, and remembered that he was on a _cliff._ The soldiers were still approaching him, getting closer and closer. He tried to clutch one of the weapons hanging at his sides, but he was shivering too hard to do anything productive at all. Actually, he couldn’t even feel his fingers. He let go, and it returned to floating at the ready, but that wasn't going to help him now.

They were almost within reach, and Dragon came to the only logical conclusion while cornered on a cliff: he stepped back and let himself fall, leaping down into his Umbra after clearing the edge.

The cliff wasn’t really that high up, and after just barely a second, he stepped back out. There were bushes around him to break his fall (not that there was really any fall to break), and it didn’t seem like there were any soldiers around to ambush him. Hopefully they'd assume he was dead after falling off a cliff.

Then again, who was he kidding? If they knew anything at all about him, they'd know falling off a cliff wasn't going to kill him. It wasn't even a very steep cliff, for that matter. Any regular human would probably be just fine, even without having to cheat through the fall.

So… he had to leave. Above him, he could hear the soldiers talking, and he wanted to go before they figured out how to get down the cliff.

“Should we chase?"

“No, it's not worth breaking orders for a single event. We're already in trouble as is.”

Obviously, things had changed while Dragon was frozen. The question was: how much? There were mysterious soldiers near Oaklore trying to kill him, infected dragons being chained up and hunted, and massive swathes of forest were blackened and burnt, from what he could see up on the cliff. Although… that could have also been because of when everything was on fire when Wargoth attacked, so maybe that part wasn't new. This part of the woods was familiar, and up on the cliff, wasn't that where it all started? It was where he met Human the first time.

Something in his heart tightened at the thought, and he shook it off. That was beside the point, here.

More importantly, it meant he was near Oaklore Keep. Maybe Captain Rolith would help…? Although he hadn't seen Rolith before being frozen, so he might also just be attacked on sight. Also, he wasn't liking how the closer he got to Oaklore, the more soldiers there were. They didn't seem to notice him peeking through the trees, but he knew for a fact that he was extremely conspicuous, so it was probably for the better if he just stayed far, far away. Maybe they could ignore the darker-than-pitch shadows in the treeline from a distance, but he didn't want to press his luck and get too close. “Terminated” was not a word he'd like to have attached to him, thank you very much.

He… probably had to take the long way around to get to Falconreach. The way to get to Falconreach normally passed right in front of Oaklore, and not to mention, that hydra head was probably rotted through, if they never managed to repair the bridge.

Maybe he could wait until nighttime? The problem was, he'd still be incredibly conspicuous and darker than his surroundings. Even if he just snuck around in his Umbra, they would probably still notice a pulsing hole of nothingness on the ground, so it wouldn't be very good as a disguise. There weren't any convenient full-body cloaks in his pack, and… now that he thought about it, the entrance was probably lit at night. If the soldiers were stationed near Oaklore, they'd have patrols at night, wouldn't they?

So… the long way around. Dragon held back a sigh, and started walking. At least he could try to warm up, since it was nice and sunny out.

* * *

 The ice crystal was a last grim reminder of a darker age, when humanity could just barely beat back the Other things beyond reality. It was a time that no one knew anything about the things beyond conventional magic, before the Rose. The crystal represented one of the Rose's first victories, trapping one of humanity's greatest threats within. Dian remembered objecting to just _leaving_ it there for anyone to see, he wanted it to be contained- or at the very least, kept somewhere other than the middle of the woods. He was told, in no uncertain terms, that he was just one of dozens or hundreds of previous soldiers in the Rose with this exact concern, and no, they weren't planning on moving it, which could disrupt the delicate magical matrix holding it together, and yes, he should stop patrolling near there and put it entirely out of mind if possible.

That was why he'd been waiting to try to report to Asterid, whose office was filled with paperwork, people bringing more paperwork, and people carrying out completed paperwork. He'd already been waiting for almost an hour, and if he waited any longer, he'd miss dinner. Of course, Dian wasn't going to ignore a potential threat to humanity just to go eat dinner.

It seemed the office was finally clear, at least for the moment, so Dian took it as a sign that he could enter.

“Commander Asterid-” he started, thinking about how to word this.

“You're dismissed.”

“What?”

Asterid looked up from her books and fixed him with a withering glare, one hand still filling out forms without even looking. “... Dian, is it? You are dismissed.”

And so, Dian went to get dinner.

* * *

 It turned out that the entrance to Oaklore Keep wasn't actually _that_ well defended, nor was there any actual need for Dragon to use his Umbra. It was a really nice day out, so he was glad that he could just... walk straight past, and enjoy the sun on his skin. It was kind of weird that there wasn't even anyone waiting at the entrance to watch for intruders, but maybe they thought no one would be stupid enough to walk in through the front entrance to attack them? Maybe things had changed, and they didn't need to station a guy with a dragon in front of the entrance anymore. He wasn't about to complain, either way.

It was really almost like nothing at all had changed. He just had to ignore the fact that the red banners with the symbol of the king had been replaced. There it was again, the insignia of the red rose on black, trimmed in blue, proudly displayed in front of Oaklore Keep.

Going inside seemed like a supremely bad idea, now.

A patrol group of soldiers approached him, and he almost dove straight down into his Umbra, before remembering that that would be even _more_ suspicious. Dragon tried to be as nonchalant as possible, and discreetly tried to stop floating. Just an ordinary traveler in ordinary traveling clothes, yep! Nothing suspicious at all here, no need to "terminate" an innocent traveler.

He had to grab one of the weapons at his side to stop it spinning from his nervousness.

Luckily for him, they didn't pay him any mind at all. They were nursing… head injuries? He wasn't any medical expert, but they were all cradling their heads and didn't even look up at him.

One of them had a sort of intricate red mark on his face, like something heavy and ornately designed had smacked him right on the cheekbone. It looked painful, sure, but familiar. Almost like… like someone had been hitting them with a giant hammer. Things were looking stranger and stranger, and Dragon really didn't want to press his luck by staring at their faces for too long before they realized anything off about him. He wanted to get to Falconreach before it got dark out, and maybe get something to eat. There was still a ways to go, through the forest, and he didn't want to wait around for the next group of soldiers.

It turned out that they had, indeed, fixed the bridge, but he had to walk over a rotted hydra head and an broken bridge _anyway_.


	3. Chapter 3

Falconreach looked almost like it always did, which was the most pleasant surprise of the day. The guardian at the gate paid him no mind, nodding him in, and the houses looked the same as they always had. He was sure most of them had been rebuilt at some point after Wargoth burned them down, but how long ago was that? Sure, everything seemed familiar, but… it shouldn’t have been, considering last time he’d seen the town, it was ravaged by elementals and Wargoth’s army.

Everything around him looked calm, peaceful, and distinctly not on fire. It seemed like some people even recognized him, like that one guardian staring at him. Either that, or they were suspicious of him and were getting ready to attack.

… Dragon waved to him, and after a few hesitant seconds, was rewarded by a wave back.

That answered one question, at least, and he walked towards the center of Falconreach. It seemed like not all that much had changed. All the same shops were still there, the same trees were miraculously still in the same places they always were- unless they'd burned down from Wargoth’s attack, and he'd been frozen for decades- he quickly put that idea out of his mind. It was almost unnerving, just how normal everything seemed.

Everything would make sense, if he maybe just went to the inn and found Ash or something he recognized. It would all be fine if he just found a friend, or anyone he knew, and they could explain everything that happened. Everything would be fine. He kept repeating that in his mind, and hopefully it could even be true.

There was a flicker of red in the corner of his vision, and he turned. Then he forced himself to turn back around. There were more of those soldiers, walking through the streets just a little ways behind him.

It didn't seem like they noticed him, and they just continued on by until they were out of sight, chatting about what someone called “the archmagus” was doing. The entire thing went over his head, and he didn't _think_ he knew anyone by that title. Maybe it was someone he knew, and they just made a bunch of new titles. Or maybe, it was some entirely new threat with the entirely old desire to kill him. There was something nagging at him, about the insignia of a red rose they all wore on their armour. It was almost familiar, almost symbolic, and every time he tried to figure it out, he entirely blanked. The armour itself wasn’t interesting or anything in the slightest, leather with silver accents, but he couldn’t figure out _what_ it was about that insignia that bothered him so much.

Dragon deliberately let out a slow breath. He didn’t just want to keep standing in the middle of the street like an idiot, and he really didn’t want to stick around in case they came back. It was starting to get dark out, and he wasn’t far.

He rounded past Cysero’s store, and tried to ignore the man’s cheerful waving and yelling that there was something interesting and new in stock. He looked the exact same, and was definitely a familiar face, but asking the Mad Weaponsmith about the events after he was frozen… that was an absolute last resort. Dragon didn’t particularly want to look at whatever insane and inane new invention he had, either. Or, well… he’d maybe consider it later, if he was really, really bored.

Dragon got to the center of town, and everything was _almost_ the same. Twilly was sitting on a stump, looking at the open sky, Lim’s weapon shop was (somehow) still standing, and… Ash…

Ash was nowhere to be seen. Ash normally stood near the Falconreach Inn, sometimes sleeping, but he wasn’t there. Instead, there was a complete stranger. Dragon ducked around the corner, hoping he hadn’t been seen, then peeked back around the corner, drawing on the shadows of his Umbra to cloak himself better.

It looked like he was an older man, clearly a seasoned warrior. He was wearing rather ornate armour, steel trimmed with gold in elaborate designs, but it had clearly seen a lot of wear. Both the man and his armour had their fair share of scars and dust, but they still shone brightly. Literally, in this case. Most interesting of all, was the glowing sword that he was holding. There were ribbons of pure light streaking around it, and it looked like it fit perfectly in his grip. He wasn’t wearing the emblem of a rose, which was probably a good sign, but otherwise, he seemed like a complete stranger.

There was something weird about that sword, too. Almost like he’d seen it somewhere before, and while as a hero, he had seen many glowing swords in his years, he was quite confident he’d never seen this specific sword.

Come to think of it, the man actually seemed a little familiar, too. Maybe he was a distant relative of Ash? A weird uncle visiting the town? That would make sense, maybe.

He looked up, thinking about what he remembered. Then he looked down, at his Umbra, and up again. The sky was streaked with pinks and blues, sun edging closer and closer to the horizon, and Dragon realized just how long he’d actually been sitting there, staring at a stranger like he could probe his secrets just by staring at him. It was a miracle there was barely anyone around, and the soldiers hadn’t shown up.

There was no time like the present, though. He walked around the corner to approach the man, who seemed to have dozed off against the inn wall while Dragon was contemplating the mystery of his appearance.

Dragon walked towards him, within a safe conversational range where he would hopefully not be stabbed from, and the man’s eyes snapped open. (Dragon took a step back.)

There was a moment where Dragon desperately hoped he wouldn’t have to fight a random stranger before even getting anything to eat, then the man’s eyes shone with… something. Hopefully it was recognition that he was the famous Hero of Falconreach, and not the burning desire to kill him. He could use a lot less of the latter, just in general.

Then, the next moment, he was tackled, and the man’s arms wrapped around him. Oh god, he was going to have to fight some random stranger-

“Dragon! I can’t believe it’s you, you’re finally back!”

What?

Dragon dove into his Umbra to escape the crushing embrace around him- was that supposed to be a _hug_? If so, the man was even stronger than he’d expected- and emerged just a few feet away, at a much safer distance. Now… how to best talk to this random stranger? Or… or was he something even worse than a random huggy stranger, a _fanboy_? He knew Dragon’s name, did that mean he was a fan? Did fans normally run up to people and try to hug them? Either way, he had to approach this delicately, with finesse.

“Who are you, and what do you want with me?” Nailed it.

The man looked crestfallen, so maybe he hadn’t nailed it. At least it probably meant he didn’t have to fight him. There was a supremely awkward silence for a few moments, only broken by Dragon’s stomach growling.

“I’m… going to walk into the inn now?” Dragon meant for it to sound like a firm statement, a display of dominance, but it ended up phrased more like a question.

The man didn’t seem to object, and just sort of slumped against the inn. Dragon practically sprinted inside, trying to put some distance between him and the man. He really didn’t want another hug ambush like that. After all, he didn’t want to have to find out if his shadows could heal broken ribs.

Inside, the inn seemed almost the same as always. The odd jobs board was still there, although the natures of the jobs seemed a little different, people were talking about San Robin… wait, was he actually _still_ in the back room?... and Serenity looked the same as she always did.

“Oh my! Dragon, is that really you?”

Dragon managed a smile, although he knew it wouldn’t be visible. “Good evening, Serenity! I’d love to talk, but, do you have any of that fresh baked bread? I could really go for some right now.”

“Of course. Just give me a moment to get it out from the oven! We haven’t touched your room since you were frozen, so get settled in if you’d like.”

Almost an hour later, when Dragon had eaten an immense amount of bread and almost entirely forgotten anything was wrong, he went outside to take a walk and maybe see what else was new. And was promptly ambushed by the strange man with the glowing sword. Luckily, he didn’t try to hug him again.

“Dragon, I’m sorry it ended so badly earlier. I know this all has to be very confusing to you. We haven’t seen each other in a long time, but a lot has changed since you were frozen.”

It was true that he was confused, but the man wasn’t really helping that situation. He still had no idea who this person was, or what he wanted, and now was… probably actually a good time to figure that out. Well, it looked like there was no getting around this. Dragon took a deep sigh, and looked the man right in the eyes.

“Who are you?”

The man actually facepalmed. “I… oh, hell. I’m an idiot. Dragon, you’ve been frozen for years. Warlic started thawing you after we found you frozen in a block of ice near Oaklore Keep.”

Dragon looked behind him, at the inn. Then he looked at the man. He was a little skeptical.

The man buried his face in his other hand as well, now. “It’s me, Ash.”

Dragon looked at him again. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Ash?”

He didn’t know it was possible for a man to express so much pure shame and regret with his face buried in both his hands, but today really was a day for new discoveries.

“Ash Dragonblade.”

“Do you know him? I haven’t seen him, and I was getting a little worried.”

“No, Dragon. It’s me, Ash! It’s been years since you were frozen, and since then, I’ve had to take up defending Falconreach. I didn’t even think about how different I looked to you, it’s been so long. Lore itself has missed you.”

Dragon probably could have spent a few more hours wondering and assuming the man was crazier than Cysero, but… the man kind of did look like a grown up Ash. All the little things that didn't add up were starting to add up now, and he didn't like the sum. All the rebuilt buildings in Falconreach that had burned down last he saw them, the strange organization everywhere that hadn't existed before, the suddenly rebuilt bridge that had had a hydra head lodged in it for _ages_ , the way Serenity kept asking him if there was anything he needed or wanted to know while he kept just asking for more and more bread…

Wow, it was kind of obvious, thinking about it now.

“Ash?”

There was a broad grin on the man's face now, and Dragon wondered how he'd missed the resemblance. It was the same smile he’d seen every day in Falconreach for years. “Yes?”

“How… what…” Ash was still smiling up at him, waiting for him to ask questions if he needed help, just like always. Dragon struggled to think of the right question to ask first. But… there was really only one thing on his mind, after this revelation.

“Where did the sword come from?”

Ash’s face was back in his hands, again.

Of course, Dragon had a lot of other questions, too. Ash had a lot of answers, but Dragon was still trying to process the fact that the random girl Ash found… and turned into stone… and broke into pieces… was actually a princess after all, and a fancy glowing sword, to boot. What were the odds?

“So… your sword…”

“Dragon, I’ve been explaining this to you for the past 10 minutes. Isn’t there anything… _else_ you want to ask? Maybe about the current times, or what’s changed when you were frozen?”

“But… a sword.”

“Let me explain what’s happened while you were frozen, then. After you were frozen, an organization called the Rose was founded, with the intent of ending all magic after the Magic Crisis years ago.”

“So, when she’s in the sword, can you… do you… um…”

“At first, this organization stepped in out of nowhere, to help defend against monsters, after you were frozen. We didn’t know where you went after the battle, and though Wargoth was gone, those were dark times. Then… then they started being more and more influential, and while they protected us, they started enforcing things more. Before we knew it, they were part of King Alteon’s guard, and they started trying to shut down any and all use of unauthorized magic, not just forbidden magic.”

“But… a sword?”

Ash completely ignored him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ash is a swordfucker.


	4. Chapter 4

It had been years since he'd seen it last, but the woods around Falconreach looked very different from Dragon's time. It seemed the clawkins and bears had all but disappeared, and the flora was unique, to put it one way.

“Those are… new.” Dragon gestured to the luminescent mushrooms growing on some tree roots. They blinked back at him, waving flagella as if to gesture back.

Ash barely spared them a glance. “If they don't have legs, you don't have to fight them.”

Dragon looked back at the mushrooms, which were still following him with their eyes even as he walked further down the trail. Thankfully, they didn't have legs, just stalks that plunged through tree bark and waving flagella that curled and writhed. They made direct eye contact with him, staring with glowing blue eyes that unnervingly mirrored his own. Dragon looked away first, picking up his pace a little bit. “You can fight them?”

“They're just like regular red mushrooms. They aren't what we're looking for, though.” With a sweep of his blade, Ash cut through one such mushroom that was getting to be just a little too friendly. He didn't even break stride, continuing his march onwards through the woods.

Dragon edged around the mushroom's twitching body, which was flashing a rainbow of colours in its death throes. It flickered wildly through different hues, casting long, eerie shadows around it, flagella squirming erratically and coiling up around itself. He let just a little bit of shadow escape from his fingers to turn what was left to dust… just for good measure, of course. Not because it was still smiling at him the whole time or anything. No, he wasn't creeped out at all!

For completely, absolutely unrelated reasons, he walked a little faster to match pace with Ash, who was alert and scanning the area for any enemies. He was the expert here, after all, and Dragon had no desire to find out what kind of monsters had replaced the wandering clawkin and sneevils that formerly inhabited this place. Or to be eaten with mushrooms that had teeth that were a little too sharp for comfort.

Ash was leading the way through the woods, and Dragon could say with some certainty that personally, he had no idea where they were going, so he was content with following. He wasn't really great at directions to begin with, and mazes were a headache he'd gladly accept a guide for. The path here wasn't clearly marked, and Dragon constantly stumbled over the underbrush. It was dizzyingly confusing at best, and ahead of him, Ash just continued walking forward, without even bothering to make any attempts at finding out where they were. Every tree looked the same, and all the weird growths and strange fauna were starting to look the same, too. According to Ash, this forest had been the staging ground of some insane mage who'd managed to travel to another dimension, and whose forces were then repelled back in a battle that raged for days. With the help of the Rose, the forest was mostly clean, even if it didn't really feel like it.

All the glowing mushrooms were just a side effect of the otherworldly corruption and magic energy, and probably wouldn't give him any magical maladies or tumours made of weeping eyes. _Probably_.

There were soft sounds coming from the trees if he listened close enough, like the beating pulse of a heart. It felt like the entire forest was watching him, timed to the steady rhythm of its own heartbeat. Dragon tried not to listen too close, and instead focused on anything else he could. It was probably better that the forest was quiet, but he almost wished for some monster to attack. Anything to break the strange, tense atmosphere.

“You know, this is kind of familiar. Well, minus the whole mutated forest thing. And you suddenly growing up into an adult overnight.” Dragon broke the silence first, slightly uncomfortable with just having to listen to ambient sounds such as crickets chirping and the distant howling in the background. It was probably just the wind, but… you never know. “It's been a while since we last adventured together, hasn't it?”

“It really has been.” Ash turned slightly to give him a slightly wistful smile, while using his sword to slap away the hand of something leathery trying to rise up from the ground, without even looking at whatever it was. Dragon fought back the urge to ask whether or not that was something his princess appreciated him doing with the sword. It would ruin the mood, wouldn't it? And… if the princess had a problem with Ash using her to fight disgusting monsters and cut down stray branches in the forest, she would let him know, wouldn't she? Dragon tried not to go any further down that train of thought. “But I think the circumstances were a little different.”

“How long ago was that?”

Ash paused for a moment, probably searching through memories that had faded through the years. “I think it was when… sometime while trying to rescue my princess.”

Dragon thought back to the last time they'd really gone on an adventure with just each other at company like this. “Oh, that was when I used soulweaving to fight off cave creatures while you were screaming in the corner, wasn't it?” Ash's smile turned tight and strained, although it didn't properly leave his face. “Are there still any basilisks around here? It was pretty funny seeing you scream back at them, especially when you just fell asleep-”

Ash clapped a hand over Dragon’s mouth, dropping his voice to a low whisper. “Quiet. I hear something.”

Flinching back, he immediately dropped backwards into his Umbra at the contact. To Ash’s credit, though, he barely stumbled before dropping into his own crouch. Dragon poked his head up from the Umbra to look at whatever Ash saw. True enough, there was something just up ahead, a dark shape pacing back and forth through a clearing. It didn't seem like it noticed them yet, but whatever it was, they instantly knew it as something Other. It was clear why they hadn't encountered any monsters to fight so far.

The Other was like if someone had crossed a dog with the exact opposite of a dog, and then thrown the resulting abomination into a blender to boot. Dragon could see the cross section of it as it turned around and walked back and forth, sometimes with four legs, sometimes with five, sometimes with only inverted space where legs should be on any normal creature. But… there was something strange about it, and Dragon squinted. It was unmistakably something that belonged from beyond this world, but parts of it seemed almost to lag behind, resolving into actual material shapes. And… around the equivalent of its neck, there was something that didn't shift the same way all the flesh around it did. There was a metal collar, emblazoned with red sigils, attached to an otherworldly abomination that seemed to be patrolling the area. That was never, _ever_ a good sign.

Judging by the soft intake of breath, Ash seemed to realize the same thing.

The thing's ears pricked up, all six and a third of them, and it lunged toward them. They dodged to opposite sides, Dragon dashing through a tree with his Umbra, Ash vaulting over a bush. The Other turned on a dime, or maybe it just turned inside out to face them, and let out a harsh bark. It seemed they would have to fight, after all.

Dragon struck first, tendrils of shadow whipping out from his outstretched hand. They divided, and divided again, and again, eating through the air to rush toward the Other. It was faster, though, and streaked to the side. The shadows barely managed to graze its hide, but they still carved thin channels where they had connected. He cut off the flow before they could start eating the surrounding area as well, and pulled back his arm. His opponent was too far for that, now, and he readied himself for the next attack.

The Other bellowed, rushing towards Dragon with too many teeth and paws for one creature, and with a speed its sheer size wouldn't have suggested. It was so close he could see its wounds weeping a mix of clear fluid and blood in thin rivulets. He barely had time to think “That's weird,” before diving down into his Umbra, a mass of claws and fangs just barely clearing him. It turned around and was ready to attack again, letting out a howl that hurt his ears to listen to.

The howl was cut off by a surprisingly dog-like yelp, as a streak of golden light flashed through the air, and connected with the side of its head. There was a throaty warcry from Ash, and he was dashing forward, sword in hand. The thing was briefly stunned by the sudden attack, and while Ash struck it with a slash of his sword, Dragon took the opportunity for his own attack.

Above him, Ash was grappling the thing, holding it back with his sword. He seemed to be infused with golden light and defending against its savage attacks, which probably meant he could take a stray attack if Dragon missed.

While still in his Umbra, he materialized one of his favourite projections above. The shadows coalesced in an instant, and there was a large, spinning gear where he once stood, and with a flick of his metaphorical wrist, it ran straight through the Other again and again, sundering both flesh and spirit. Dragon heard a roar of pain and a shout of surprise from above, and remembered he'd forgotten to tell Ash that little detail. Maybe he’d explain it later, if he remembered. For now, though, he rose from where the gear was waiting, right behind the Other.

He sent a crackle of shadowy lightning to score through its back, and the thing hissed in pain, though he didn't know if that was from him, or Ash. It was trying to swipe at the knight with an excess of legs, but he blocked with the flat of his blade, before delivering his own attacks in return.

Ash's sword was bright, so bright it (she?) hurt to look at. Every time he swung the blade, an arc of light sprang forth, and the Other clearly didn't enjoy it. What wounds it took weren't continuous, fragmenting across its surface as bits of it shifted in opposite directions, but the blood-ichor mix was pooling on the ground where they were fighting, and it was clear they were both going to tire.

Dragon realized he was staring for just a few seconds too long, and shook his head to clear his thoughts. The Other was tensing, bunching up as if to gather its energy for a big attack. It hadn't used any magic yet, and he didn't want to see what kind of attack it would bring up. He took a breath, and readied his magic.

“Ash, get out!” He called out, and while he didn't get a response back, Ash was already running from the blast radius.

His Umbra roiled at his feet now, shadows spilling upwards and crackling around him. Twin constructs were each forming at his sides, and the weapons by his sides started to tick backwards, rising up in the air to channel energy. Two humanoid shapes made of lives never lived were at the ready, made of pure shadow and positioning themselves by his side for their attack.

Dragon focused in on the Other, readying his aim at its central mass. And then, unexpectedly, it turned, and his view of it shifted.

It was bunched up on the ground, but the cross section was at just the right angle that he could see through the dimensionally shifted flesh. Curled up on the ground was a bleeding, shivering, and most importantly, euclidean, dog. It wasn't a whole dog, far from it, bits and pieces seemingly floating in air, but it was definitely three-dimensional, and definitely somehow partly Other. His earlier thought that it was like a dog crossed with the opposite of a dog came to mind again, and was truer than he thought. There was an ear, part of its front legs, and some of its body, attached to otherworldly flesh that was at just the right position for him to see disappear. Then, just as quickly as it appeared, its shivering let him see the monstrous hide shifting again, and Dragon had no choice but to fire then and there.

He let out the raw shadow energy he'd been charging, focusing it into narrow beams toward the Other. They crackled and arced like lightning, bucked against the current like they yearned to be free, and screamed with the voices of infinite timelines that yearned to exist, if only for the fraction of a moment. For just an instant, the Other made a sound like a dog whimpering from the bottom of a mile-deep well, before it was drowned out by the thunderous roar of the beams.

It was deafening, so loud it wasn't even there. It was the echo that time left in its footsteps when it marched forward, and Dragon gritted his teeth.

Shadows poured from him for as long as he could manage, until he could be sure there would be nothing left of the Other. The shadow people were nearly hollow, channeling as much as he could manage before they would run out. He couldn't hold it for too long, but Dragon had no desire to leave it around and corrupt anything else.

“Dragon… Dragon, I think that's enough.”

Ash's voice snapped Dragon from his focus, and it was true, he was at his limit. All at once, the energy stopped. The shadow figures at his side melted into nothing more but ash in the wind, and then nothing at all. Dragon himself lowered to the ground slowly, phantom mana pains shooting down his arms. His weapons appeared by his sides once more, ticking again at their usual rates, and his Umbra calmed back to a featureless, endless pool below his feet.

He dimly realized Ash's hand was on his shoulder, and looked at him with a distant smile. “I'm fine, just took a lot out of me.”

“I understand. Still, you should maybe hold back a little bit, next time.”

They both turned to where the Other was previously lying, and there was nothing left, though the surrounding area was scarred and burnt. To say nothing of the trampled foliage and claw marks raking through the underbrush, there was plenty of damage done by their own hands. There were trees still sizzling with light mana, though that was starting to dissipate, and a patch of the ground that was just… gone. Right where the Other used to be, the forest floor was almost undisturbed, save for a scoop that was entirely missing. It was surprisingly clean, actually, like it had never existed. Which was actually true, now.

“Did we do that?” Dragon marveled at the destruction, looking down at the crater and investigating the trees.“We should do this more often!”

Ash surveyed the area as well, almost professional and stoic, if not for the playful grin on his face. “Don't get ahead of yourself, Dragon. Didn't we come here to investigate?”

Dragon’s face fell. He _knew_ he was forgetting something about this quest.

“I… probably should have gotten that collar off it before doing that.”

Ash had the audacity to chuckle at him. “You're probably right.”

“Do we just go back to Falconreach, now? It's…” Dragon looked up at the sky, past the tree cover. It was a beautiful day out, and the sun was still high in the sky. Good adventuring weather, but perfect picnic weather. “Should we turn in? Serenity might have some fresh bread for us.”

“Let's keep going. There's still more ground to cover, and I don't like the look of this.”

Dragon tried not to look sad at the idea of not going back to get more bread, but he was the one who wanted to go along with Ash to begin with. It would be pretty rude to skip out now, wouldn't it? Plus… this whole thing did seem extremely suspicious, and it was definitely a good idea to look more into it.

“Lead the way, then.”

The grin on Ash's face made it all worth it, as he turned to the darker depths of the forest, leading the way with sword in hand.

Even though Dragon was awful with directions, it was easy enough to figure where they needed to head next. The collared Other had been walking back and forth, around and around, as if it was a particularly eldritch guard dog patrolling an area. Logically, if they wanted to get to the bottom of this, the best place to start was whatever it was guarding. After all, anyone using an Other as a guard wouldn't use it to protect just any random bit of forest. There was a nice little clearing where it had been pacing around, and going in that general direction was the best lead they had.

While it made sense, Dragon already slightly regretted his decision just a few minutes in. They were in the heart of the forest now, the tree cover thick enough to choke out almost near all light. What little sunlight managed to filter down through the leaves left strange, shifting dapples of shadow across the ground, shivering in a way that couldn't quite be explained by the wind. Even the wildlife seemed wrong. There were no animals in sight, save for a squirrel that ran up a tree trunk and disappeared once. Other than that, there seemed to be no traces of any animal life, like the whole forest was abandoned. There weren't even any more possibly-sapient mushrooms, but the less said about the things that did grow from the trees, the better.

It was almost completely silent, save for the rustling of leaves and the crunch of leaves beneath their feet. (Well, beneath Ash's feet. After Dragon almost tripped over a root, he elected to float just a little above the ground instead, even if it drained his mana.)

It wasn't until he almost tripped over another tree root, folded in on itself and taking up more space than it should have, that he realized. Of _course_ the forest looked like this.

Before he could say anything, though, Ash stopped in place and actually spoke first. With his free hand, he touched a tree, running his fingers over the bark. “This isn't right.” He broke off a piece of bark, and it shattered into fine, glowing particles that winked in and out of existence, brightly lit as the void between stars. “Nothing like this was in the forest last time we surveyed, a few months ago.

“This is familiar.”

Dragon was almost surprised at himself, both because he didn't mean to just blurt it out like that, and also because something in this world was finally starting to make sense. The weapons by his sides started spinning idly while he thought.

Ash took it in stride, still examining the trees. He plucked one leaf off a tree, and it came away in his hand to no longer exist. “Do you know anything about this?”

“It's…” Dragon struggled to find the right words. He really didn't think this through. “It's kind of like a corruption.”

“Kind of?”

See, this was why he didn't care for magical theory, especially when related to the Other. It was hard to explain, and the right words for doing so probably didn't even exist in any mortal language. Opening his mouth really did dig him his own grave. Still, he had to try. “Corruption isn't the right word, either. More like an infection. Except, it isn't… really? It's more like… like...” What if he tried a comparison? That would probably go across better.

Ash sat himself down on a tree stump, waiting for his friend to figure out things. His patience had to be magical, in some way, if he was still paying attention to Dragon trying to stumble through an explanation.

Explaining things was really, really hard. “Like if you eat a mushroom, but it's not a actually a mushroom, and then it starts growing roots through your brain.”

Ash just blinked at him and stood back up, eyeing the depths of the forest. It was too dark to see very far, but from what they could tell, it would only get stranger from this point forward. “Let's just… investigate more.”

“Agreed.”

He was honestly ready to agree to anything to get out of that situation, up to hurling his prone body off a cliff, but investigating for more clues was probably a good deal more productive than that.

They set off deeper into the forest, and this time, Dragon took care to avoid floating face first into tree branches.

Beyond the forest's heart, it was even quieter, save for leaves rustling and the occasional distant warbling sounds coming from every direction. Judging by how far they'd walked and the position of the sun in the sky, this should have been past the other side and ended up near the Elemental Foothills by now. Dragon was absolutely sure that this was a liminal space caused by the presence of Other and exposure to their forbidden magic, but there weren't any more in sight. Actually, there was no wildlife at all as far as he could see. The closest it had gotten in the past hour was when he thought he saw a shape blur through the tree branches, but that could have just as well been the wind. It was a puzzling mystery, and he wasn't sure if he'd like the answer.

“Wait.”

Dragon almost bumped straight into Ash, despite the warning. “What?”

“There's something about where we're going…” Ash crouched down, examining the ground. It was mostly dead leaves and grass. “Look.”

There wasn't anything special about the ground, except for the almost-mushrooms that grew haphazard in a line. Except, they were lined up, and when Dragon looked to both sides, there were two trails of mushroom-like lattices just a little ways apart, leading away into the distance.

It wasn't one they had noticed before, but there was actually a faint path. It wasn't a great one, barely there at all, but the trees were just a little more spread out, and those strange demifungal growths outlined the trail. It was just a little too much to be coincidence, and though it wasn't much, he couldn't stop seeing it now that it was pointed out. It was somehow the exact path they were following before stopping, even tracing a curve around a boulder they'd passed by moments ago. Generally, there was only ever one reason for something like this, and it wasn't one he liked.

“We're being led somewhere,” Dragon finished the thought. “Someone, or something, wants us to follow.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.” Ash sounded grim.

“Do we go back? It could be a trap.” Dragon didn't really _want_ to backtrack and not accomplish anything, but this whole thing really did smell like a trap. On the other hand, though, walking into the trap would probably lead to answers, albeit probably unpleasant ones. On the other other hand, bread would be nice after a long day walking around the woods.

There was only ever one answer, though.

“No,” Ash shook his head. “We keep going. If we can get to the bottom of what's going on here, it's worth going into a trap.”

Dragon couldn't help the wide grin spreading over his face. Despite everything that had happened, some things would never change. “Then what are we waiting for?”

There were still a good few hours of light left, a lot of answers to find, and an entire mysterious path to explore, after all.

He set off on the trail, and this time, Ash was the one who had to catch up.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dragon meets an Epoch. It does not go well.

The woods were actually even bigger than he’d thought at first.

Sure, it was easy enough to set off on an adventure with a spring in his step, but accomplishing what came after that was easier said than done. Everything in the forest looked the same, especially now that the sun was starting to edge downwards, the sky turning orange through the leaves. It seemed they'd been exploring for ages, following the mushroom path that could lead to anywhere at all, including nowhere, and he really wished that he'd at least brought a snack with him. Maybe he should stuff his pack with more food before every adventure, that was an idea to consider for the future. Although, that raised the issue that he'd have to have some way to keep it warm, wouldn't it? Maybe with the use of magic….

He glanced at Ash. It was impressive how much he'd grown since they'd last seen each other. He really was a knight now, and walked with that same sort of confident alertness that the Guardians always had while on patrol. He also carried around the sword everywhere and constantly leaned on it or held it by the hilt, and that was something Dragon didn't want think think about.

Thankfully, this alertness didn't extend to sneaking glances at him. Or… or maybe he did know, and just didn't say anything. He turned his head to face forward instead, at that thought. It was probably a better idea to watch out for any threats, anyway.

Dragon had the advantage that he didn't have to actually, physically walk, but the near negligible drain on his mana was going to add up over time. He could float forward easily, but he had to accommodate a little more height to dodge incoming roots and low-sweeping branches, which was a pain. Plus, if he floated too high up, the branches would sweep down and run their twigs and leaves through his hair, which was discomforting at best and outright horrifying at worst. Some of those branches looked exactly like fingers, long and spindly but still ready to clutch at him if he ever took a single wrong step. It was a very delicate balance of magic to avoid smacking his head directly into those.

His feet brushed just a little too low, and tree roots tried to snake around his boot. There was just the slightest resistance before it passed through his Umbra, and then a severed bit of plant fell back to the forest floor. Dragon frowned.

It seemed like Ash was having a fine time though, which made sense. He was wearing proper armour and those muscles weren't just for show, so it would only be natural that he was used to walking around the woods for hours at a time. Speaking of which….

“We've been walking for a while, why don't we take a break?”

There was a silence, and a few brief moments where Dragon worried that maybe Ash  _ had _ been eaten by mushrooms, after all. Then there was a very loud, very drawn out sigh from behind him, and then he decided that maybe it would have actually been for the better if he'd really been eaten by those mushrooms.

“Dragon…” Ash started, then stopped. Dragon tried his hardest to avoid eye contact, and really didn't like that tone of voice. That was the tone of voice people used when they were about to point out that he'd said something incredibly stupid.

“Yyyyyes?”

“We've been walking for only about 10 minutes.”

He glanced down by his side, just for a moment, to check his weapons. Then he realized that he was agitated, so they were ticking faster than usual and therefore entirely useless for accurate time telling, unless it really had been that many hours. It felt like a long time, but definitely not as long as they were trying to tell him.

He looked up at the sky, at the tree cover. It didn't really  _ seem _ like that little time had passed, did it?

“That… that's not a reason not to take a break!” There was a very futile attempt at a defence, and he decided to just drop it.

Although he could feel Ash's stare burning into him with the intensity of the sun, mercifully he didn't say anything in response. Probably because there were many, many things wrong with that statement.

The urge to instantly drop into his Umbra in shame was almost too much, but that was probably the only thing that could make the situation worse. Standing there in silence was awkward and uncomfortable, but being in a pulsing hole of shadow with Ash staring at him would probably be even worse. Instead, Dragon stared at the scenery as nonchalantly as possible, looking in every direction that wasn't aimed at one Ash Dragonblade. There was a tree. And another tree. Really, there were just a lot of trees, so many that it was unnaturally dark and he could barely see the sky above anymore. He almost hadn't even realized how it was growing progressively darker, but he sure noticed now. Maybe that was where he'd gotten the impression that so much time had passed. It was a cool, brisk evening out, and while passing below the leaves, he could see streaks of fading purple and orange in the sky. He really did want to just go home, eat some bread, and take a well deserved break, although logically he knew that it could wait until after the quest.

Maybe the problem was just with  _ this _ forest.

Dragon had explored a lot of forests. Some of them were haunted. Some of them weren't actually haunted, but probably would have been better off with just ghosts to worry about. One could say he had experience with this kind of thing. This forest, though, was unlike any of those monster-infested woods or cursed groves.

It wasn't entirely unlike a normal forest, but in a lot of ways, it was nothing like what a forest should have been. Just walking through the deep of it like he was, he could feel that everything was wrong. There were trees all around them, and they cast deep shadows from high, seeming almost taller than they should have been. They loomed high above, dripping moss and vines from the canopy down to the ground. In the corner of his eye, sometimes he could see those same vines squirm and slither, coiling around where he had been just moments ago. He tried not to turn around too much, after seeing that the first time. The underbrush wasn't much better, and all the tangling vines, blinking luminescence in the distance, and creeping moss were all starting to blend together. It was almost silent other than distant, ambient noises like rustling and soft clicking sounds, and walking on the forest floor made him feel almost self conscious about breaking twigs underfoot.

This deep in the forest’s corruption, everything was strange, and Dragon itched to find out the source and get out as soon as humanly possible. It itched on another level, too. There was the constant feeling that there was something crawling beneath his skin, that just wanted to burst out and come back to Falconreach. It was a raw instinct, ready to turn tail and run away at any moment- one that he crushed down with no mercy.

Still, it was a magical forest. For a first quest after being frozen in ice for who knows how long, it could be a lot worse!

It almost reminded him of something he'd done long ago, when he was first starting what he'd officially call his very own adventure. It was as just outside of Falconreach, investigating the colour leaching out from Surewould Forest. Although, that had a simple fix, and was actually something that worked out for everyone in the end.

Ash had helped him out then, too. Sure, it was just to pass on the message, but he was there! It was still weird how old he was. Dragon chanced just a glance out from the corner of his eye, hoping it wouldn't be  _ too _ awkward.

There was no one at his side.

He spun around, a lance of fear shooting straight into his heart. Weapons rose to the ready in an instant, ready to destroy whatever ambulatory fungus or interplanar beast had snatched his friend. And… Ash was right there, actually.

Behind him, just a few paces away, was Ash standing stock still. His head was turned skyward, seemingly not having noted Dragon's brief moment of panic, and there was a concerned expression spread over his face. He was completely still, but there wasn't any obvious threat in sight. After just a moment more, the weapons fell, rematerializing and ticking steadily again. It didn't seem like Ash was possessed by anything, or that his brain was hijacked by a mushroom, or any other number of awful fates.

Dragon looked upwards as well. It was a little hard to tell from through the leaves, but deep, dark blue shone past them. It was clear out, barely any clouds in the night sky, and he could see stars twinkling in thankfully familiar patterns. In other words, it was a completely unremarkable night out. Being out at night in a spooky forest wasn't that scary, was it?

Dragon took a step over and tapped Ash on the shoulder. “Is something wrong?”

Ash didn't stop looking upwards, his eyes fixed on a patch of night that opened through the tree cover. “We've been walking for hours.”

“So… it's time to take a break, right?” Dragon tried his hardest to not sound too hopeful, he really did. But… he was also hungry. “After all, we've been out the whole day.”

His friend's eyebrows were furrowed enough to till and turn into a cornfield. “That's not right.”

“... What, taking a break?”

Was taking breaks somehow a breach in hero etiquette now? Did Ash become some kind of hardcore hero who never actually took breaks? Had Dragon been actually…  _ replaced _ ? How would they even-

“No, not that.” It was a testament to how concerned Ash was, considering he didn't come up with a playful remark. “Dragon, how long have we been walking?”

He thought back for a few moments. If they set out in the morning, and it was the middle of night now... “It's been all day, hasn't it?”

“It would seem so, wouldn’t it? But I don’t think we’ve really been out for that long. We haven’t stopped to eat or to take a break from walking, so do you really think we’ve been out here the entire day?”

Something prickledat him in a distant corner of his mind. Dragon frowned in confusion. “What are you getting at?”

“Haven't you noticed?”

Ash was still staring upwards, and he didn't need to see Dragon's confusion to take his complete silence as an answer.

“We haven't been here for that long, just a few hours at most.” He gestured toward the deep night sky, dark in the dead of night. Barely any starlight filtered down between the leaves, illuminating Ash's face starkly against the forest's shadows, now facing Dragon. The thin light set the planes of his face between darkness and bright, eyes cast into shadow and piercing straight through him. “The last conversation we had, I remember the sun was setting. That was less than an hour ago, by my guess.”

There was something looming in his mind, pressing against his skull harder with every word. The forest was dead silent already, save for the breaths they took, and he could hear the weapons by his side. They ticked louder than the blood rushing through his ears, deafening in almost every way. He almost didn't even need to hear Ash's next few words. 

“So… how is it this late already?”

With that statement, everything snapped into place. He could hear his own ragged breaths in perfect clarity. The itching under his skin was stabbing now, and he knew exactly which direction it was pointing away from. There was ticking, but not just from his weapons. It went at its own erratic pace, pulsing like a defective heart, and it was the loudest thing in the entire forest, a sound he didn't realize he was hearing. He’d been hearing it the entire time they were in the forest, but only just realized at those words. It crawled over his skin in a way that made him want to bolt, now that he knew the reason why. It was a truth that resounded through him, that made him want to run for the hills and never look back. Of course, there was only ever one way to confront this kind of thing. Distantly, he heard himself speak out loud, clearer and bolder than he felt at that moment.

“I know where we need to go.”

Ash didn't press. Maybe he saw something in his eyes, maybe he just wanted to get the job done. Either way, he didn't comment when Dragon took a sudden left off the trail, perpendicular to where the mushrooms pointed.

Here, the path was treacherous again, like it was before they realized there was a trail to begin with. There wasn't even really a path, just Dragon doggedly pushing in one direction, only stopping to go around the completely impassable. It was almost the same kind of chaos as a jungle's heart, at times with barely enough space to squeeze through between tree trunks. (There were at least a few new holes in the forest, and hopefully no one would mind.) The tree roots tangled together, writhing madly and abandoning all pretense of normalcy, while the vines curled around and around themselves, extending down to try to grab them. Neither of the two were entertained anymore, and they were practically making their own trail with the vine clippings and shredded leaves they left behind. 

Above them, it was a bright clear sky out, at the height of noon. The tree cover thinned more the further they went out, and once again it was a beautiful day out. It was warm and lovely, the kind of day that was perfect for adventuring, but even that was only a small comfort to Dragon. With each step (or interval of floating, for him), the instinct grew. He felt the need to just turn in the opposite direction and run, like there was something in him completely repelled by what was happening around. Whenever he looked at Ash, though, he didn't seem as bothered. More just determined and mildly concerned than anything, really. So, Dragon gritted his teeth and fought against his every instinct screaming at him.

If Ash noticed it, he didn't say anything, leaving their journey in blessed silence. The ticking was louder the closer they got, so he probably couldn't have held a conversation anyway.

Eventually, after that felt and looked like hours and days of walking, they came to a stop. Dragon was tense, and the forest fell away to reveal their destination. The trees cleared entirely, and they were in a clearing of sorts, right in front of their destination.

It was… a sheer cliff face, an expanse of near vertical rock. Looking upwards, there seemed to be more forest above, but there didn't seem to be any way to climb up. There weren't any convenient footholds, and it was hard to tell just what was up there other than more trees.

Ash finally spoke up, maybe because he was sick of the cryptic nonsense. “Is this it?”

Dragon nodded his head, concentrating all of his focus on just that simple action. Instead of explaining or giving a proper response, though. He held out one hand toward the cliff, palm open, eyes flaring with light. Shadow energy rushed forward, branching again and again and again into little streams of darkness that cut straight through the rock. Metal screeched, sparks flying out from wherever the decay ate through insulation and steel, until there was a sizable hole big enough for a person to easily fit through. It was near completely dark inside, sunlight pouring through the newly made hole. Dragon walked forward… and stopped.

He could feel it, now. An alien heartbeat, thrumming through his being. Each moment was suspended in time, dripping at a rate unnatural.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He didn't realize he was baring his teeth until from the darkness, a shape emerged. It roared without sound, instead sending out ripples that Dragon knew only he would hear. He could feel its heartbeat, and he knew without a doubt that it could feel him. There was still the urge to run away, even stronger than ever before, but something else rose from deep inside him: outrage.

Ash was saying something, watery and warbling compared to the ticking. He didn’t listen, and he could feel his Umbra pulsing back, as a sort of response.

Clearly, that was the wrong thing to do. The thing made the first move, lunging forward from the darkness, so fast he only realized it had moved after he had already descended into his Umbra for half a moment. That was a mistake, though. He could see it now with his eyes, and it was an  _ affront _ .

It was almost a clawkin. There were traces and hints of a long tail and a nimble pose. It had entirely different claws though, scything and massive, nearly dragging behind its comparatively small body. Its form was exaggerated, somehow graceful despite its unnatural slenderness, and it crouched down, tails swaying. Most offensive of all, though, was the iridescence of powerful magic. Bands wrapped around it, surrounding its body and radiating forth. It shone in every colour of the rainbow and pure white, and this close to its being, he could tell the purpose. The magic was literally binding the creature to the timeline, keeping it here. With each wrong beat, the magic pulsed in response, anchoring it to the timeline. That was the reason for the off tempo heartbeat, and Dragon knew that it found him as offensive as he found it.

Ash was charging forward, blade lit with energy. He was fast and had good reflexes, but it  _ moved _ . Before his eyes, it more flickered than actually moved, leaving afterimages in his vision after it was already gone, and its scything claws parted the air with no resistance. The clawkin wasn't interested in Ash, though, and really… neither was Dragon. They both ignored him entirely.

It was moving too fast for the eye to see, his own movements sluggish in comparison to its acceleration. There wasn't a point to seeing it with his eyes, though. Its tempo was erratic, faster then slower to then speed up again, but it was always there, the loudest sound in the entire world. The magic was like a beacon, bright rainbow and flashing in response to its movements, correcting each ripple it sent through the timeline. That was all he needed to see, and seeing it enraged him in a way he couldn’t articulate in his barely-there thoughts.

Dragon struck out to where it would be, weapons cutting through the air in their own way, leaving papercuts in the time around him. The trail of darkness from his weapons sliced through the creature's trajectory as it moved, and it screeched with pain before redoubling, aiming straight for his throat.

There was nothing in the world but him and the clawkin-thing. Claws whistled just past where his head had been, while he dropped into his Umbra.

Dragon hissed in slight pain as those same claws immediately flicked then speared straight into his Umbra, and he emerged at a distance aways from the cliff, to be met by the creature again. It already crossed the distance while he had made his retreat, and slashed at him with abandon before he'd even finished emerging.

There were massive claws tearing through his skin. With just a flick and swipe, and then again, before he even had time to realize he was injured or realize something hurt, it had struck. It was fighting with the full intention of disemboweling him, to make his existence completely cease.

Then again… he was trying to do the same.

His hand speared straight through, blades of pure shadow slicing between bones and tendons, the paw impaling him dropping to the ground, his other hand removing the claws from his flesh.

The thing screeched, its tempo punctuated by staccato bursts of panicked acceleration. Bursts of prismatic light flared from its body as it dashed away. It was fast, it went through time faster than him, but that just meant it was feeling the pain for even longer than him. For just a moment, it stopped, nursing its injury while it could. It was almost a shame it wouldn’t get anything more than a moment- it was Dragon’s turn.

Reaching deep, deep inside him, he looked for the end of the world. The final hour of existence was only ever just a shadow away from him, and he took hold of that hour. It must have been what the creature felt from him, and now it would feel it in full force.

The clawkin froze in place. It was completely immobile, paralyzed by the end of time, if only for a moment. He could breathe, and it turned out breathing hurt. It hurt a  _ lot _ .

Dipping straight into the gathered shadows pooled at his feet, he took a deep breath, taking shadows in, then breathed out. His self sipped from what he had, and he felt vitality rushing into his body. He could physically feel himself healing, shadows stolen from the clawkin now turned to him. At the very least, he felt slightly less disemboweled. It also made him feel better knowing that his existence was an abomination to it and healing with shadow energy would make it even angrier.

The clawkin started moving again, and he resisted the urge to curse. That would just give it more time, even if it was annoying. Of course that wouldn't keep it down for long.

It launched itself toward him, its momentum completely unbothered by him dipping into energy from the end of time itself, ready to spear through his chest and come out the other side. He had one more spell left in him, though, and the shadows at his feet rippled and distorted, before dark shapes speared upwards.

The acceleration stopped, the manic tick-tick-tick-tock that had filled his entire world gone, and the real world faded back into his awareness. Dragon could think again, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

Massive claws only inches away from his chest, the creature was impaled on spires of shadow, elaborate as they were deadly. He blinked and stepped away, and the spires collapsed back into his Umbra. As they fell away, its body turned to ash in the wind, aged into nothing in an instant with the preservative time magic broken. After just seconds, there was nothing left, both in real life and in his mind. Looking at the world now, their battle left marks and deep gouges in the ground. There was nothing left off its physical body or the paw he’d cut off, although he didn’t know if that had faded to dust on its death or when he’d severed it from the body attached to the time magic.

It was late afternoon judging by the sun in the sky, and somehow they’d ended up far from the original cliff. He had… no idea how long they’d actually been fighting for, but at least his mind was clearer than when he could hear nothing but a mad tempo. He was even more lucid than he remembered being in the forest, which raised a whole bunch of new questions that he didn’t really want the answers to.

Ash was where he just vaguely remembered seeing him running in swinging, blade still at the ready but his face clearly confused. After that kind of pitched battle, he barely had to think to blink over to Ash, who jumped at his sudden appearance next to him but didn’t try to impale him or anything.

“Why don’t we take a look inside?” He gestured into the darkness of the strange facility, and Dragon was all too happy to go back to regular adventuring, like exploring inside strange secret buildings meant for even stranger and more secret experiments.

He could still feel the same sensation, though. It was distant, faint, but now he could recognize it for what it was.

There was the sensation of something crawling inside him, his skin itching from the inside out. He knew that somewhere out there, in the forest or beyond, there were other tempos just slightly off from the rest of the world, desynced from everything else that existed. More importantly, though, that meant… they could feel him.


	6. Chapter 6

On the inside, the facility was dark and cold, despite the lovely day out. That was the first thing Dragon noticed, stepping inside. Just passing the threshold felt like he'd been plunged into ice water, compared to the warmth of the afternoon sun. It looked like there were supposed to be light fixtures, but they were all dark, the only light coming from the hole he'd conveniently made earlier. He could see just fine in the dark, but it still added to the oppressive atmosphere.

The atmosphere wasn't just physical, either. Dragon had done more than his fair share of exploring musty abandoned buildings and caves, so it wasn't like the cold and dark was unfamiliar to him. Just standing inside, though, he could feel the familiar itching under his skin, a pervasive sense of _wrongness_. Something horrifying had happened here, tainting the surroundings even after the thing was dead. The presence wasn't as maddening as it was like actually being near the thing earlier, and nowhere near as strong, but it was still there. It permeated the air, and tasted like rot when he breathed in. Still, it was at least bearable, and it was just another reason to try to get to the bottom of this. It could be kind of like encouragement: the sooner he figured things out, the sooner he could leave. Of course, that wasn't much encouragement to not just leave right then and there, but he could stick it out. Hopefully.

The unnerving atmosphere was one thing, but that wasn't actually a problem. Being uncomfortable was nothing, compared to some of the things he'd faced. There was a bigger issue, one that he guessed just by stepping inside. Looking around at his surroundings, this part of the facility seemed to be a maze of corridors. Even from his position, he could see doors and passageways in all directions, with little signs and plaques _everywhere_. A few of them had directions to what were presumably different rooms, but turning around, there was a plaque right behind him. It was twisted and half-eaten by his decay, but from the parts he could still make out, it was a riddle. This didn't look like the kind of place that would be easy to navigate.

Plus, it was a secret abandoned facility that performed all sorts of unethical experiments. No one ever designed those with clear floor plans in mind.

Looking closer at the riddle, it was actually pretty professionally done. It had a clean mirror polish to it, so it was obviously intended as part of the architecture, but who actually put riddles in their shadowy secret facility?!

Something tapped him on his shoulder, and Dragon shot straight down into his Umbra, emerging again at the facility entrance. And… in front of him, hand still outstretched, was Ash, presumably shocked into silence or awkwardness. To be fair, maybe he shouldn't have tried touching him out of nowhere while inside a mysterious dark empty facility, because that was usually the kind of thing that didn't end well.

“... Sorry.”

Ash shifted a little and cleared his throat, turning to face Dragon properly. “Anyway, I think we should split up from here to explore more.”

Splitting up, in an abandoned empty facility, holding some kind of temporal anomaly, filled with darkness and a maze of different paths? A shady secret place doubtlessly used for untold amounts of unethical experiments, whose true purpose they didn't even know yet? The place where the atmosphere stank of time's rotting corpse, and wrongness permeated the very air around them?

“Sure, why not?”

Ash beamed at him, and his sword erupted with equally radiant light. The light magic was strong enough he had to shield his eyes, which were already adjusted to the darkness. The glow was almost as bright as the midday sun, and cut straight through the surrounding darkness and gloom. For a moment, just the barest, briefest fraction of a moment, he saw light curled around Ash like arms in an embrace, before it was just Ash, sword held in front of him like a torch.

“Let's meet here again in a few hours. I want to find out who's responsible for this.”

Dragon gave him a determined nod while fixated on the passage he wanted to go down, mostly because he didn't want to try to make direct eye contact with something that bright. He wasn't the type to stare into the sun for no reason, what with Ash's elaborate gleaming armour reflecting light like a mirror.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the heroic flick of Ash's cloak as he strode away, the light growing fainter as he rounded the corner.

Dragon sighed. He could see in the complete dark with perfect clarity, but it must have been handy to have a princess of Light always conveniently available as a flashlight. That probably would have made Ash's adventuring easier than it was in his own early days as a hero. He was almost jealous of it, actually.

He couldn't just stand there at the entrance wallowing in his own misery, though. It would make more sense for him to first pick a direction to go in, and _then_ wallow in his own misery.

The closest thing he had to a lead was something that made him uncomfortable. It made him want to shrink into his Umbra and never come out. There was a very obvious trail, a twisting and sundering of time, and it led in the direction that he knew the clawkin-thing came from. It would be the perfect place to go for answers, and it would definitely lead to something, whatever that something would be. The problem was, that meant getting _closer_ and even farther into the thick of it, and that was a concept that made his weapons tick faster.

He decided right then and there.

Once he got back to Falconreach, he would eat as much bread and take as many baths as he wanted. Taking a deep breath, he started heading down the hallway with the riddle, following the temporal trail as well as the occasional deep claw marks in the walls and on the ground.

The path was relatively straightforward. He could literally feel it, and probably didn't even need to see in order to know where he was going. (Seeing was still nice, though, considering the various equipment and boxes strewn about the floor.) He passed by a few doors that probably led to even more doors, some with plaques, some without.

Wait, wait. Was that actually…?

He backed up a few meters. Sure enough, there was a plaque on a door that looked like any other, but there was something rather unusual about it. The plaque had an engraving of an image, not a name or anything. It was a cleanly engraved picture of a squirrel. There wasn't any explanation or anything, but the thing looked the same as every other door did, save for the squirrel.

Already reaching toward the door knob to unlock its mysteries, he thought about it for a moment, and hesitated. On one hand, he really had to find the actual source of what was going down, and small woodland creatures didn't seem to have anything to do with time experiments. He was probably more likely to find relevant info by walking into any random room with someone's name on it, or opening one of those filing cabinets he saw. Even the _supply_ closets were probably more helpful than whatever was behind the squirrel door. On the other hand, he… really wanted to know what was in the room, and what, if anything, squirrels had to do with this place. It was just going to keep sitting there and tempting him, if he didn't open it.

Well, good of a reason as any.

Dragon grasped the doorknob and turned it.

The doorknob rattled in place, and refused to budge. It turned out the door was locked, and would refuse to give up its squirrely secrets that easily.

He pulled his lockpicks out of his pack. Honestly, thus was just adding a bigger waste of time on top of the time it took for him to backtrack, consider whether or not it was a good idea to open it, and think about squirrels. However, a locked squirrel door was just going to tempt him even more with mystery, and he wasn't about to leave without unlocking its secrets. Besides, he hadn't picked a lock in a while (years, in fact) and it couldn't hurt to sharpen up his skills a little bit.

Luckily, none of the picks were rusted from his time in the ice. He pulled out his tools from their roll, and then considered what the best approach would be. He jiggled the doorknob a little, and inserted one pick in the bottom half of the lock, applying just the slightest bit of pressure.

The lock gave just a bit, and he kept the pressure on, testing to see where it ended. It turned out that it ended all the way around with a familiar _click_ , and he hadn't actually needed anything more than the tension wrench.

That was… weirdly a let down, like he was ready to crack open a huge mystery, and it just opened right up. Sure, it was easy, so maybe he didn't have room to complain, but… that was it? No squirrel shaped keys? Not even the slightest amount of wiggling and jiggering? He didn't expect to be that disappointed by an easy lock, but that was just plain unsatisfying. Was the security that bad, that they thought no one would ever find them in their secret cliffside door? Now that he was inside, where was the mystery or intrigue?

He shook his head and opened the door, stepping inside the room.

It was actually a rather plain looking room, like every other part of the facility he'd seen. The difference was, it was filled with tables that held strange instruments made of glass and metal. There was so much spent mana on them, he could practically taste the tang on his tongue. It wasn't just time magic, either- there was something arcane, too, like someone was trying to create spells. Failures of spells, too, if the pile of smashed glass and twisted metal off to the side was any indicator.

Closer up, the instruments all seemed different. He peered down into one that resembled bagpipes made of glass, and all along the inside were tiny runes etched into the surface. There was a discarded folder to the side, possibly with experiment results or instructions inside. Dragon opened it up, and it did not have anything nearly as useful as he would have expected.

“Do not use the mana reducer for making coffee. This means **YOU** , Carl.”

The angry statement took up nearly an entire page, and flipping it over, there wasn't anything else in the folder.

Glancing around at the rest of the room, it didn't seem like there was anything interesting, especially considering he still had no idea what any of those things were for. They seemed relatively clean and dust-free, meaning someone had used them for _something_ , and recently. What that something was, he had no idea, and he left the room, making sure to lock it again behind him.

The floor he was on actually seemed pretty small, unless the side Ash went to just happened to be absolutely massive. There was a staircase up ahead, but there really weren't as many doors as he'd expected. There were a few branching hallways to the side, but wherever they led, he wasn't interested. Maybe that was just expecting too much. After all, it would be pretty hard to hide something _that_ big in a cliffside.

Up ahead, he could feel the distortions in time that marked where the clawkin had went. They were fading fast, now that it was gone, but the trail led up the staircase loud and clear.

Actually, he probably didn't even need that sense to know where he needed to go. Just looking at the deep gouges and valleys in the stairs told him all he needed to know.

Taking a deep breath, trying not to lose his mind, he ascended the stairs.

As he got closer, the sense was stronger. The trail of where it had torn through time was one thing, but now that he got closer, he could actually feel it like layers. It had spent seconds at most tearing through down the stairs to fight him, but where he was headed was where it lived. He could feel how it spent even longer there, maybe even lived there for months of real time. In the… spooky, seemingly abandoned secret facility. Right.

The second floor was almost identical to the first, with almost the same layout. There was one key difference, though- off to the side, just a ways away, there was a door made of solid steel. It was thick, engraved with containment runes and protected by thick slabs of solid steel. The key word was “was”. He moved just a little closer to inspect the scene.

He could easily see the protections built in because they were scattered across the ground, bits of twisted steel and melted runes around where the door used to properly stand. There were slashes in the steel and shavings all over the place, so much so that he had to levitate just so he wouldn't accidentally stab his foot or something. On a closer inspection, there was an unfamiliar material sandwiched in between as well, clearly magical and deteriorating. Maybe some kind of magical insulation? Whatever it was, it clearly hadn't done its job properly.

Dragon really didn't want to touch it or get any closer. From where he was standing, the room was big and mostly empty, completely unfurnished save for the tubes and cables hanging from the ceiling that were now torn to tatters. There were scraps of what could have once been chains and straps, before they were completely destroyed. One wall was glass, a one-way mirror that didn't work its tricks anymore in the absolute darkness. Otherwise, what mattered wasn't what he saw, but what he _felt._ There had been strong magic used here, but more importantly, the room pulsed with its own heartbeat. Inside the room, time didn't move at quite the same rate it did anywhere else, like something had warped it at its core. Without a doubt, he knew that whatever the clawkin was, it was created, and this was its birthplace. Just being this close to the epicenter was outright painful, so he backed away, out of the room and closer to the hallway.

That explained maybe a little bit, but still it didn't actually lead anywhere useful. Although… there was that other room, with the one-way mirror. He looked to the side, and sure enough, there was an open door, slightly ajar. It had a plaque, but it was completely unreadable due to the scratches and claw marks carved into its surface.

Ready for the worst, Dragon pushed the door open and stepped inside, weapons raised and at the ready.

It was… a completely normal office, albeit one with a one-way mirror taking up an entire wall. If not for the mirror, he could legitimately imagine it being in any random official building in Falconreach. At least, that was what his eyes said. Something was slightly off, and the moment he closed his eyes and thought about it, he realized what that something was. He could actually think, without being lost in a vague cloud of roiling anger and disgust. The room seemed to be shielded from the energy somehow, since his head faded into blessed silence the moment he closed the door. He took a moment to just slump back and finally take a chance to breathe, something it felt like he hadn't done in days.

That wasn’t what he was here for, though. Taking a deep breath, Dragon opened his eyes to inspect his surroundings and get back to work.

The office had a few bookshelves lining the walls filled with instruments and books, all about obscure subjects he didn't know anything about. He opened one up, then put it back in its place when he realized he didn't understand what any of the numbers and formulas meant.

Something with actual interest was the desk. It was clear aside from a dried-up inkwell and a small book. It was a small notebook, bound with leather, but it had a familiar emblem embossed in the surface- that of a red rose. Somehow, the Rose were involved in all this, and he had a feeling that this book would tell him what “this” actually was. Dragon picked it up and flipped through the pages, catching just snippets of words, but he saw enough to know that this had the answers. He didn't know if he would like those answers or not, but he made himself comfortable behind the desk and started reading.

* * *

Experiment Log

Doctor Kairos

Fort Arvensis

I am the head researcher of this project, although I will never be able to publicly admit my pride. The Archmagus cannot know of our work, that of the nature of forbidden magic. The work we do is vital, even if it is distasteful. It must be kept in absolute secrecy.

The High Commander has helped me in subjugating the nearby lands. If any foolish adventurers in surrounding villages were to stumble upon the work or interfere, our heads would be the least of our problems. The work must be done at all costs, if we are to face future catastrophic events of a similar nature.

Happily, the Maguswood contains suitable test subjects. I have ordered the patrols to bring to me anything fitting my criteria. The experiments begin tonight.

Experiment 1: Sneevil. Captured by baiting a trap with boxes. Average for its race, no remarkable qualities. Isolating and accelerating timeline resulted in high energy consumption followed by death within minutes.

Autopsy revealed death by malnutrition, old age, and multiple nutrient deficiencies. Must remember to counterbalance side effects or find alternate methodology.

Experiment 2: Gorillaphant. No unusual qualities. Accelerated local temporal presence rather than specific isolation; subject died in 15 minutes after exhibiting accelerated movement.

Autopsy revealed heart failure as cause of death.

Experiment 9: Minx fairy. Attempted to alter subject's relation to the timestream, but unable to exact any of control. Unsuitable for testing. Subject terminated.

Reminder to inform patrolmen that minx fairies are unsuitable.

Experiment 14: Juvenile harpy. Red feathers, patrolmen reported unusually high flight speed. Applied controlled dilation of time flow using Cawcliffe's Theorem. Subject appears stable, with enhanced magical prowess and speed. Destroyed a room by accelerating through solid steel walls. Contained by use of further magic, possibly a risk of magical cross-contamination. Aged visibly and rapidly after each attempt at an attack, with ambient readings reporting high mana usage. Subject deceased after exactly 4 hours.

Autopsy reveals subject died of multiple organ failure, with indicators of extreme old age.

Experiment 19: Sneevil. Subject arrived elderly but in relatively good condition.

Timeline isolated for simple observation, then compressed. Subject expired upon procedure, and crumbled to dust spontaneously. Reminder to inform patrolmen about parameters for suitable subjects.

Experiment 21: Clawkin.

Another miserable failure.

My methodology should be perfect. My spellcasting is without fault. Yet, every diagnostic I have gives only one result: failure. Something foundational is at fault. I believe my knowledge is insufficient.

The next subject the patrolmen bring in, I will try a new method. Perhaps my understanding of time is flawed.

Perhaps a new type of subject is required, one that will stretch my scientific prowess.

Experiment 22: Human, age 21. Researcher by the name of Carl. Mana infusion to offset detrimental effects, paired with time compression and anchored to self. Subject showed possible evolution and expired after 24 hours.

Autopsy revealed loss of multiple vestigial bones and muscles in body. Magical readings significantly differed from an ordinary human, showing large mutation and variance from original readings.

I am on the right track. With a more familiar biology, I believe this experiment paves the way for success. While he was a failure of a researcher and a failure of a test subject, he makes himself more useful in death than he was in life. There must be further redundancies to be eliminated for the sake of progress.

Experiment 33: Human, age 35. In good health and physical condition prior to the experiment. In significant mental distress due to the disappearance of all other personnel, but with no physical injury.

Isolated and anchored timeline before greater mana infusion. Directed mana flow toward anchors. Subject remained aware, and displayed increased physical and magical prowess before forced termination. Physical restraints proved insufficient, and any capture methods proved to be unsuitable.

The most promising results yet. However, there are no more readily available human subjects. The patrolmen will need to collect more specimens.

Experiment 39: Clawkin. The new method has succeeded. The subject appears stable, after use of the counterbalancing magics in regards to the present timeline. Subject has increased physical prowess, and has undergone an epoch of mutation and development within hours of magical experimentation. Both magical and physical restraints are needed to restrain the subject.

After 12 hours of observation, the subject remains stable, with no decreased abilities. The mana matrix and timeline interlace have showed no signs of deterioration, and are correctly self-sustaining. Subject will likely remain stable indefinitely, with no outside interference and provided a continuous source of mana.

Success. The experiment concludes here.

Experiment 40: My magnum opus is at hand.

* * *

The last log was dated to yesterday.

Dragon flipped through the pages again. There were diagrams of anatomy and different magical equations, and an uncomfortable amount of entries about the doctor’s human test subjects, but there was nothing after the last log. There were blank pages, if that counted, but nothing else written, save for that last line.

Doctor Kairos’ office was insulated from the magics he experimented with. He couldn’t actually feel the presence of the twisted magic, but it felt like he was suffocating anyway.

The facility was abandoned. The second-to-last experiment was dead now, broken its restraints and killed by his hand. The researchers and anyone working in the building was gone in the same way, experimented on and then “terminated”. The last thing remaining was the experiment log, an empty facility, and the spent magic burnt into the very essence of the facility. It was all coming together now in a horrific tapestry. There was just one last thing that didn’t quite fit, something rather important.

If the facility was abandoned, where was Doctor Kairos?

He already knew he wouldn’t like to answer to that question, but it didn’t seem like one the experiment log could answer. Tucking it away in his pack, he thought back. The name Carl… he heard that one somewhere, didn’t he? Whoever they were, they were a researcher who worked under Doctor Kairos, and was eventually one of his victims.

Oh.

Back in the disappointing squirrel-room, there was that folder, the angry one. That handwriting actually looked a lot like the handwriting in the experiment log, now that he thought about it. This Doctor Kairos, whoever he was, had decided his colleague would make a fine test subject, after using the mana… thing as a coffee maker. That seemed disproportionate at best, and he knew he definitely wouldn’t want to meet this Doctor Kairos.

He almost reached for one of the books on the shelf again, but hesitated, and sighed. He knew he was just stalling at this point, and there wouldn’t be anything else in the office he could use. Just the idea of going back out sounded horrible though.

Well, he could always just make it up to himself by eating a lot of bread when he got home, after he was done with the creepy place.

Dragon opened the door to face the music. He had to explore the rest of the spooky, shadowy facility, after all.

He only took a few steps before he recognized something almost completely out of place: human voices. They were faint, but floating up from the floor below. He could hear something like a shocked exclamation, the murmur of a conversation. Why would people come to an already abandoned facility though; didn’t Doctor Kairos turn all the other researchers into magical experiments?

Well, if all the researchers were gone, that meant… the voices had to be the Rose patrolmen, possibly there to deliver more test subjects to Doctor Kairos. The last entry was dated to just yesterday, so they wouldn’t know about the abandoned facility or the… destroyed door…

Dragon dropped like a stone into his Umbra, emerging at the first floor again, just in time to hear the conversation. He slid into the shadows, hiding behind the ruined wall to listen in. There were three different voices arguing.

“-yesterday!”

“Why shouldn’t we report this to Asterid?”

That name seemed familiar, but it wasn’t anyone he knew. If it was someone in the Rose that these people were reporting to, it probably wasn’t a good thing.

“Again, we’re not officially supposed to be here, you buffoon!”

“Do you really have to yell it like that? This is off the record, after all.”

“Then… who should we report this to?”

“I don’t know! It’s a terrible idea to tell our superiors we’re here, though!”

The last voice paused, and hushed the other two voices when they tried to speak up. The “buffoon” tried to complain, and was cut off by the sound of a smack, like someone was just slapped in the face.

“Someone’s here.” Uh oh.

“Doctor Kairos?”

“Maybe. I can go investigate, you wait here with the prisoner. Like I said, something must have happened. _Don’t_ lose sight of him.”

From his hiding place, he could hear footsteps coming closer and closer, and he slid into his Umbra and under the nearest door.

“Who’s there?”

Dragon didn’t even breathe (though he didn’t actually need to while inside his Umbra) until the voice had faded and footsteps passed by his door without stopping. He emerged and let out an exhale, then he froze in place.

_Ash._

He was still out there, on the other side of the facility that Dragon hadn’t explored, and the Rose patrolman was headed in that direction. He didn’t even know anything about that part of the facility, much less anything about Ash’s whereabouts, and it would be bad news if the Rose soldier found him before Dragon did. The guy somehow knew he was listening in on them, so being subtle and knocking the guy out without being noticed was probably out the window. He needed an actual plan, quick.

Right. He was in a dark, abandoned facility with no lights on. There probably wouldn’t be any backup for them, considering this was something off the record for them, so he’d just have to deal with the three. Two of them were waiting outside, and with any luck, they’d stay there. The Rose patrolman was looking for Doctor Kairos, and didn’t know anything about the events of the past day. That meant he had the information advantage, he just needed to know how to use it. He had to think fast, and raked his mind for ideas. Even stupid ideas, those could work too. He wasn’t really in any position to be picky. One of those stupid ideas sprang to mind, and the more he thought about it, the worse and better it sounded to him.

Well, if the Rose didn’t know anything about what happened, or why the facility was abandoned and partially destroyed… that meant Dragon could just make up something of his own, couldn’t he? What was the guy going to do, call him out on historical inaccuracy?

He knew what it looked like already. After all, he was the one who killed it. Now, all he had to do was make a convincing replica

Shadows crackled and sparked around him in complete silence, and he envisioned a particular shape in his mind. The Umbra beneath him split into a second shadow, bubbling and rising into a new shape that he poured shadows and energy into, winding it like a spring. He’d have to make sure this one could last, unlike his usual ones that would only have enough to focus his already existing energy into.

Dragon opened his eyes to behold is creation, and then closed them again. It… certainly _looked_ like a terrifying escaped test subject with giant claws. He could definitely imagine the thing tearing up the walls and restraints like he’d seen while walking around. It looked more like a murderous nightmare given form than anything at all like a clawkin, really. The flat darkness and crackling energy around it looked nothing like the clawkin’s shining prismatic tones, but it would have to do. He’d just have to bank on the hope that the random delivery lackeys wouldn’t actually know anything about the true nature of Doctor Kairos’ experiments.

He sunk into his Umbra, closing off his senses. Narrowing his focus toward the shadows churning inside his creation, he could feel the unrestrained energy in it, how it was all under his control. It was exhilarating, and definitely something he’d have to actually explore later.

The shadows moved and twisted under his control, and they threaded around the door. He couldn’t see through it, since it didn’t really have eyes, but he could still sense his surroundings from the shadow energy. All he had to do was feel the distorted reflections of time, now helpful but still annoying, and control his shadows from afar. It was something he already knew he could do, he’d just never considered using it quite like this.

He smiled, and his construct bared its teeth in turn. It was time to hunt, and that was exactly what it was created to do.


	7. Chapter 7

It was a lovely day out. The sun was shining, there wasn’t any major threat or war looming on the horizon, and Ardis was stuck with two idiots while on a secret patrol. It would be a wonderful day out at any other time, but right now, it was torture. The sun shone bright through the trees, which would be perfectly fine if not for the leather armour she was wearing. Sweat was clinging her tied hair to the back of her neck, and the standard-issue helmets were only making it worse. They'd already been out for hours, and at the sun's zenith, the heat was nearly unbearable.

“Are we there yet?”

Well, it wasn't just the heat making unbearable. She'd seen plenty of hot days out, but right now, she was sweating  _ and _ dealing with the biggest idiots in town. While she was suffering the heat and doing her job, the two were continuously laughing and joking. They had even taken their helmets off, a complete break in decorum, even though she envied the idea of letting the wind tousle her hair.

It would have been nice to ride in the woods instead of in the open and under the sun like this, but that would be a terrible idea. The Other corruption had never truly faded, and every Rose soldier had heard tales of how the forest was twisted beyond recognition. Of course, she didn't know anyone who'd ever gone inside to check. It did mean that she had to spend an extra few hours going farther out 

Ardis’ face twitched, but she kept her poise and didn’t turn around. There was no need to spook her horse any more than necessary, not when these idiots were already yelling and having a time of it.

“We’re still not there, right? But it’s been an hour, so we’re probably almost there.” Actually, they’d only been traveling for a half hour, at most. She restrained the urge to correct him, knowing it would just escalate into more idiocy. The only thing worse than being stuck with idiots on a hot day would be  _ arguing  _ with those idiots.

“Well, do you know when we get there?”

“Hmmmmmmmmmm…” She really, really wished she could just smack him in the face at that very moment, but that wouldn’t be befitting of her. Especially not when she was so close to a promotion. “... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…”

Ardis just kept having to remind herself of that promotion. She wouldn’t be surrounded by idiots anymore, and especially wouldn’t have to keep going on these irritating secret patrols. Doing good work for the Rose was something she would never truly complain about, but she despised having to non-lethally capture those magical creatures, hoping that one out of dozens in a single week would fit the good doctor’s specific wants. He was picky, which made sense for a researcher, but more importantly,  _ he could never make up his mind. _ Today, they'd found one that could maybe work, but only time would tell if the good doctor would actually accept it, or if he would shoo them back out to capture a new one. Going out at this time of day was something she dreaded, and it would probably be hard to find any wandering mages out in this kind of heat. They would probably be in their fancy towers reading dusty books or something, which sounded a lot better than spending hours on horseback with her “team”.

It was something she would never dare voice out loud, but the good doctor was capricious at best. Thinking back to previous jobs, the good doctor almost always found something at fault with at least one prisoner each trip. Maybe they were too old, or too young, or too red. One time, he'd asked for young animals, then yelled at her for bringing a baby clawkin in perfect shape, saying it was too young for proper data. There really was no pleasing some people.

“...mmmmm… It should be close, right? If it takes half an hour to walk from base, and we’ve been walking for an hour…”

At the very least, today’s haul would hopefully be different. The doctor had been on edge lately, asking for “different” test subjects. He hadn’t specified why, exactly, but he asked for mages. Magical prisoners, random wanderers, people wearing shiny rocks- anyone. The command didn’t quite sit right with her, considering no one actually knew what the experiments were even about, but she wouldn’t dare question orders that came from that high up. If it was desired by the High Commander, then it surely had some greater purpose that she was in no position to question or defy. Besides, magic users couldn't be trusted, so it wasn't like she had any particular problem with handing them over for research. It would probably be the most they'd ever be able to contribute to the cause, and with any luck, the Rose would be one step closer to wiping out all traces of forbidden magic.

“That means… we should be there in half an hour!”

She just had to keep reminding herself of that. Those dark days were over, but only because of countless sacrifices stemming the tide of endless attacks, and her sanity was a small price to pay for the continued safety of the kingdom. No matter what, they were working for a greater cause. That cause was greater and more important than her desire to throttle her own comrades.

“Hey Ardis, when will we be there?”

Still riding ahead at the head of the pack, she didn’t even turn to meet his eyes while answering him. “It’s close. We’ll be there very soon, so stop bickering about it.”

“Right, right… Because this cart is pretty heavy, isn’t it? I want to get home, so I can see if ol’ Quarters can get me a new sword. I’m thinking about gunning for a promotion. Think Asterid’s got her eye on me, so I’d say my chances are looking preeeeeeetty good.”

Ardis allowed herself the luxury of closing her eyes for just a moment and huffing quietly in frustration, if only because they couldn’t see her face from where she was positioned. It wouldn’t do to show weakness in front of her lessers. Of course, that assumed they were intelligent enough to notice or care, which she doubted they were, but it was still something she wanted to keep in mind, especially in regard to her future. If that… that absolute idiot were to be promoted before her, she would probably… probably…

She heard the two of them guffawing from behind her, and promptly decided that there was absolutely no possibility of that happening. As far as she was concerned, those two weren’t competition in the slightest- just two stepping stones toward a greater good. Even if she couldn't see any value in them being around, Ardis trusted her superiors to know best. And since they knew best, obviously they wouldn't promote either of these idiots. It wasn't even worth mentioning, really.

“Doesn’t Ardis want that promotion, too? You gonna fight her for it?”

They talked about her like she wasn’t there. She was honestly perfectly fine with it, she pretended she wasn’t there, too. Better to keep planning ahead and staying on the alert, instead of slacking off and making crude jokes.

“She does?”

“Say she did want it. What’d you do about it?”

“Well, I wouldn't hit a lady.”

“You say that like Ardis counts!”

The amount of times Ardis had seen the Archmagus in person could be counted on one finger, but she had been calm and collected, even in a time of crisis. This hardly counted as a crisis, and Ardis let the words pass over her, face stoic and still on the lookout. To lose her poise would be to admit defeat, and she wasn't about to compromise their important mission for the sake of yelling at two buffoons. Completely ignoring their laughter and crude humour, Ardis held up one hand to catch their attention. Borrowing a line from Asterid's commands, she tried to use her sternest voice to bark out an order over their still-giggling voices.

“You two! Stay sharp, we're nearly there.”

Of course, that command implied they were sharp to begin with, which they most definitely weren't. It was the thought that counted, and more importantly, no one could say she wasn't doing her job.

Their horses rounded around the path, coming closer to the entrance, and all thoughts of promotion and throttling her “partners” dissipated into nothing, her brain instead going into overdrive at the sight before her. Behind her, she registered confused voices from her partners, but didn't pay them any mind. With a smooth movement, she slowed her horse to a stop and dismounted to investigate. Something was very, very wrong.

They were just outside the forest, in a clearing before the cliff that contained Fort Arvensis, the Rose’s secret research facility. Ardis had never seen inside the actual place, but from her vantage point, she could now. There had been a battle, that much was obvious. Ardis walked a little closer, ignoring the two people following behind her. At least  _ something  _ had finally made them shut up, even if that something was the threat of a magical menace killing them all.

There were deep claw marks in the ground, sweeping and unlike that of any creature she had ever seen before. Deep, massive grooves that upturned earth, as if they were carved out by someone holding a fistful of longswords. That was probably the first clue. The second clue was the faint trace of magic, when she took out her magical item from her pocket. She always carried it with her, and in this case, it served to check her suspicions. Nothing she knew could make those kinds of marks without magic, and her intuition was proven right. Though it was against proper form, she was glad it was with her, since she would have never picked up on the magical residue otherwise. She held it in one hand, shielding it from the sun's glare. Normally it would glow accordingly to the type of magic in its presence, usually a soft colour from ambient magic, but it wasn't doing that now. Instead, the gem was a deep, lightless black unlike anything natural or unnatural. Walking around the field, it picked up other waves of magic, from the ambient elemental magic to a new kind of shimmering prismatic magic, but it all shared a common theme- near the site of the battle, it was tainted by strains of darkness, like an absence of light that had been eaten away. Ardis was no expert in magic, and didn't actually know that much about the device, but there was a kind of ugly fear squirming in her gut now. The taint was darker than darkness elemental magic, with a lack of any glow from the gem. No magic she knew could devour elements so thoroughly. That had to mean something, and there was only one obvious conclusion.

Forbidden magic.

“Whatcha got there, Ardy?”

She ignored the diminutive nickname, instead choosing to inspect the gem. Even when she held it up to the sun, there was no shine, only an endless expanse of black. When she neared the stronger areas, rather than the glow getting stronger, the darkness only deepened.

“Magical object.”

He was clearly waiting for more of an explanation, but Ardis was hardly in a generous mood. It didn't seem like there were any more secrets to be found within the trinket, so with a scowl, she pocketed it and continued surveying the area. There was no doubt now that something had happened- but what? There were no traces of blood, no bodies to tell the tale of what had happened.

“Magic object? Asterid give you that?”

“Right, right. Well… how ‘bouts we go check on the doctor?”

She ignored the former voice, but the latter gave her pause. That was actually a good idea, miracle of miracles. Swallowing her pride, she finally turned around to face them.

“You're right. Let's check on Doctor Kairos, he might need our help.”

At least they deferred to her in a time of crisis, she thought. They followed behind her, almost like they were afraid of something leaping out from the shadows to eat their faces. On any normal day, she would internally laugh at them. Now, though, she really didn't like the idea of meeting anything that could make those kinds of marks on the ground. Still, she had to be brave, and she approached the facility- normally a sheer cliff face, now with broken and twisted scrap forming an entrance. It was like something had dissolved or carved out a hole from the outside, debris and bits of steel all over the interior. Their horses were nervous, kicking the dirt and a hair's breadth away from spooking and running off. She really couldn't blame them, honestly.

They stopped just outside. Ardis considered the hole, and wondered what could make something like it. Could those giant blades or claws have been able to cut through the walls that easily? Her two partners only stared in slack-jawed silence. 

“What could’ve made that hole?”

“Magic? Doesn't look like a weapon did it.”

Ardis paused, and reconsidered her evaluation. That was… probably correct, actually. The edges were clean, unlike if an explosive were set off from the outside, and more jagged than she'd expect from any kind of sword or weapon.

“Right, not enough metal. What kinda magic?”

“Hmm….”

She didn't want to actually go  _ inside _ . Maybe it was superstition. Maybe it was the threat of her face being eaten by some Other monstrosity. Maybe it was just that there was a chill draft coming from inside, and though she didn't want to stay in the direct sun anymore, she also didn't want to go into the clammy kind of cold that was emanating from inside.

“Dunno.”

And there it was. Right when she thought they might have had a modicum of intelligence inside their brains, they had to ruin the illusion. They were engaged in their own probably inane conversation while she was investigating a serious matter. The same song and dance as always, except this time, it was potentially a life and death situation. Rage was bubbling up deep inside her, that these two idiots would rather argue over trivial things than figure out what was happening, to stop a potential Other threat.

“Do we tell Asterid that the doctor is gone? We don't know when he went missing….”

Ardis wanted to tear her hair out. Correction, take her helmet off her sweaty head to get some fresh air,  _ then _ tear her hair out. She was  _ done _ with this patrol. Practically frothing at the mouth, she turned around with a murderous expression.

“Why would we do that? We just saw him yesterday!”

“Why shouldn’t we report this to Asterid?”

Truly, the depths of absolute idiocy. Still, if they were on a secret patrol, with no official paperwork, she could let go just this once. Her anger was white hot now, and she couldn't just let it pass without saying  _ something _ , even if she would normally ignore the two. Maybe it could even make her feel better.

“Again, we’re not officially supposed to be here, you buffoon!”

“D’you really have to yell it like that? This is off the record, after all.”

“Then… who should we report this to?”

“ _ I don’t know _ ! It’s a terrible idea to tell our superiors we’re here, though!”

Ardis was ready to launch into another spiel when she felt… something. It tingled at her situational awareness, that someone else was watching. She glanced around, but no one else was in sight. There was still that persistent feeling crawling at the nape of her neck, of some presence watching, though. One of them spoke up again with his unwanted opinions, completely ignoring her tense silence.

“Well, shouldn't we report back if it's really a mission all the way from-”

She cut him off with a slap. Maybe not the most elegant move, and one she wouldn't condone otherwise, but she couldn't let him just blabber out organizational secrets in the open like that.  _ Especially  _ when there was possibly an uninvited visitor listening in on their conversation. Organizational consequences be damned, she wasn't about to let any secrets of the Rose fall into the hands of outsiders. Just as an added benefit, though… it did feel kind of good. Especially if he was vying for the promotion like he'd said earlier.

When he looked at her like a kicked puppy that couldn't possibly understand her reasons, she mentally sighed. Honestly, she couldn't see in what world he would get the promotion over her. There was really nothing to be worried about, and she answered with a clipped response that just barely showed her relief.

“Someone’s here.”

“Doctor Kairos?”

No. “Maybe. I can go investigate, you wait here with the prisoner. Like I said, something must have happened.  _ Don’t _ lose sight of him.”

She pointed for emphasis, and though the horses eyed her warily, they didn't run off and defeat their purpose. Amazingly enough, the two even seemed to agree, with nearly no resistance. They looked at one another, nodded, and huddled together to whisper at each other, before trotting off with the horses toward a less damaged part of the clearing. With any luck, they'd even watch the prisoner without anything going wrong.

Head held high, Ardis ventured into the dark facility, stepping over the rubble and through the threshold.

Almost immediately, she realized why they didn't object to her taking the lead like that. The interior was ice cold, and not in the good way. She'd wanted to get out of the direct sun earlier, but this was  _ too much _ . Still, she wasn't about to back down now just because of a little temperature drop, not when there was a potential threat around. And when it would make her look bad by backing down now. It was cold, and maybe she shivered a little, but that was no reason to give up so soon.

Giving up was looking more and more compelling, though. She looked around and realized that she was completely, utterly lost. She'd never been in the actual facility, only dropped off subjects for Doctor Kairos to judge worthy of his experiments or not. There was never any reason or opportunity to go inside, so the layout was a complete mystery. That, coupled with the heavy and cold atmosphere, already made her consider heading home and getting a nice warm blanket to curl up in. It wasn't even like she would be missed- this was off the books already, and she didn't really have an obligation beyond dropping off the prisoner and leaving… Ardis mentally shook herself. She had a  _ mission _ , damn it. Ignoring the tiny voice in her head telling her to turn around and leave, she started walking along the corridor, farther and farther from the entrance, the only light source around. Pulling out her magical item again, she held it in front of her like a torch. It let out a watery light that barely penetrated the dark, but she could at least see in front of her. Her footsteps echoed down the corridor.

The vague sort of presence was back. Maybe it was just the atmosphere getting to her, but she was already on edge. The last thing she needed need was a voyeur to make things any worse on herself.

“Who's there?” She called out, brandishing her light, only partly expecting something to happen.

There wasn't any response, and the feeling faded as she internally laughed at herself. Nervous laughter, but still kind of laughter. It probably would have been worse if she'd managed to catch the attention of whatever came through these hallways last.

Deep claw marks swept the floors, deep enough that her weak light couldn't entirely illuminate them. They seemed like the same ones from outside, and she didn't want to imagine what kind of monster would be capable of that. Without any other leads, though, she only had her light to (literally) light her way. It shone a little brighter the further away she walked from where the claw marks came from, so that was as good of a reason as any to get away from the thing that could cut straight through metal. She just focused one step at a time, forward and forward, guided by a single light.

Around her, there wasn't anything that  _ seemed _ suspicious. Ordinary doors, with occasional little plaques mounted on them. They announced names of people she didn't know, with titles she'd never even heard of. The doors themselves were utterly nondescript, but she didn't want to look inside. Not because she was completely ignoring them or anything, but honestly it was because her footsteps were really loud in the empty facility, and she didn't want to creak any doors open. Not to mention, she really didn't want to open a door and have a monster fly out to eat her face. That would be one of the worst ways to die, so she kept her gaze forward and focused on the light to guide her way.

It turned out that there was a very good reason Ardis had never been invited inside Fort Arvensis. Its layout was almost like a maze, one that she could easily get lost in. If not for the light's waning and ebbing glow, she would have thought she was going in circles. There were turns into turns, passageways to staircases that led up and shortly led down, and dead ends where she had no choice but to turn around. At least the light was glowing ever stronger, now bright enough to illuminate the hallways and leave her no longer stumbling through the dark. There was a source of magic at the center of this, fuelling the artifact, and if that was the best lead she had, she would follow it. Maybe it was residual energy from a massive spell, or something giving off a large amount of ambient magic. Whatever it was, getting closer to it was enough to extend her light radius from inches to feet, and getting closer only made it brighter.

Ardis rounded another corner, still focused on the light in her hands. It grew almost imperceptibly dimmer, so she turned back around to where she came from, slightly put off by the dead end.

Only… when she turned around to retrace her steps, the light kept growing dimmer. It went from a bright torch to a thin candle in a matter of moments. She turned around again, and the already deep shadows were unnaturally dark, creeping slowly toward her. It was like the darkness was a living thing, barely beaten back by her light. Swinging her light forward, the darkness shrank back, clinging to the walls, but returned with a vengeance when she moved it back. It was clear that she could either choose between a dimmer light, or the utter certainty of absolute darkness.

Panic welled up inside her. If her light went out, she wouldn't be able to see. If she couldn't see, she wouldn't be able to find her way. If she couldn't find her way, she would be a sitting duck and possibly never find her way out by herself. Ardis didn't consider herself a betting woman, and wasn't going to take any chances against whatever was roaming the halls.

Just because life wasn't hard enough, she heard something that gave her pause. Echoing down the hallways, from somewhere behind her that she couldn't even begin to guess the exact location, there was a sound like squealing metal on metal. It was exactly how she'd imagine it would sound if giant claws were tearing apart the walls of the facility.

Ardis ran.

It didn't matter where. It didn't matter why. The panic in her mind was calling for her to get  _ away _ from the monsters in the dark that wanted to swallow her up, and she was happy to oblige.

She sprinted down the hallways, and stilled when at a fork. Ardis didn't even  _ remember _ turning here, and had no idea which way she came from. So… she turned left.

It was far, far too late for this revelation, but she realized she should have made a map. The twists and turns of the facility were completely unfamiliar to her. When she had first gone through, she was completely focused on the light, and whether or not it grew brighter or darker. Now, though, it flickered like a candle in the wind. She sprinted down hallways, picking between forks at completely random. No matter what she did, though, the light continued to flicker, never staying constant. Doors passed by her in a blur, the plaques even less familiar than before.

Her legs were starting to burn, though. Even worse, the flickering light wasn't improving. A darkness was intruding into the surface, deeper than night and darker than shadow. It was familiar, the same darkness that she'd seen earlier from the battlefield. Not elemental darkness. Not the mere absence of light. Something completely alien and Other. It was the same darkness that was crawling at the edges of her vision, the feeling that something was coming through the darkness, closer and closer.

Before her, her light was swallowed up nearly completely. All that was left was faint embers that barely illuminated the fingers she used to hold the device.

Ardis looked around, desperate, frantic, for anything.  _ Anything.  _ She couldn't even see the walls around her in the complete darkness swallowing her up, but distantly down a hallway, she could see a faint glimmer of light. That was all she needed to start running, faster than she had before.

Her breath was coming ragged, and she knew there was something behind her. It was soundless, unlike the pound of her boots against the metal floor, but she could feel it at her heels. Something hooked around her ankle, and she stumbled, nearly fell into the darkness to be swallowed up by shadows. The light was  _ so close _ though, and she launched herself forward as best she could towards the last pinprick of hope in the world.

The last pinprick of hope was hard, metal, and grunted when she made impact. She was on the floor now, sprawled over someone. Someone in plate armour, who scooted away to get to his feet.

“Who are you?”

Ardis collected herself off him and shakily stood up. There was light all around them, coming from a glowing sword in the man's hand, probably a magical object like hers. It was far brighter though, enough to easily cast its surroundings in a confident light. Her own light was starting to recover a little because of the ambient magic from the stranger's item, but even at its brightest, it couldn't compare to the amount of light his sword gave off. A little embarrassed by the pitiful glow coming from her own magical object, she tucked the now useless gem into her pocket. She pointed at him, trying to regain her composure.

“Who are  _ you _ ? That's not a standard Rose uniform.”

The man didn't immediately respond, instead sweeping his eyes across her and examining her uniform. He seemed to arrive at some sort of conclusion, and there was an unreadable look in his eyes. For some reason, she felt like she had been found inadequate. He didn't seem hostile, but he was a complete stranger and didn't seem like any member of the Rose she'd ever heard of.

“I'm… here to investigate this.”

Ardis narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “I didn't see you come in with the patrol. Are you related to whatever happened here?” She wasn't entirely sure what that “whatever” was, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

“That's, uh… Well, what are  _ you _ patrolling? Didn't you see how this place is half destroyed? Why are you here?”

She paled slightly. Her reasons for coming inside were pretty weak, and if this man was also a member of the Rose, she could see why it was suspicious. Her patrol wasn't even supposed to go anywhere near here officially, and if this man knew anything about that, she could be in big trouble. Backpedaling, she went on the offensive again, trying to assert her right to be here.

“I'm investigating! Did you cause this? I'll have you know, I can arrest you by force if needed!”

That was only partly true, actually. She had no idea if she had any grounds to arrest him, since usually the Rose didn't look kindly on wasting time and resources to arrest the few fools who were guilty of nothing more than owning a harmless magical object. That would even include herself and her gem, which she was loathe to reveal to others. So… maybe starting with the threat of arresting him was possibly a bad idea and overall poor decision.

“You want to  _ arrest  _ me?” His voice was smooth and disbelieving. Looking at him now, she probably shouldn't have said that at all. He was in high-quality plate armour and holding a large glowing sword, and looked like the kind of person she would normally never mess with. She wasn't here for a fight, and that pretty sword didn't even look like one that could have caused those deep marks. If any one man was responsible for all this, it didn’t seem like Ash was the one.

“Then… then why don't you identify yourself? I'm Ardis Crenatte of the Rose from Oaklore Keep, and I've never heard of you.”

He raised his eyebrows slightly on hearing that. “Oaklore?”

Too late, she realized she probably shouldn't have said that. Oaklore was far away, far enough that they didn't usually send patrols all the way over to the Elemental Foothills. Maybe another part of the Rose covered here? Was that why he was looking at her suspiciously? Was  _ she _ the real interloper?

“Who are you?” Ardis tried to keep her face impassive and tried to act like she had a right to be here.

“Call me Ash.”

She waited for more, but nothing else was forthcoming. No surname, no identification, no nothing. She wasn't even sure if that was his real name. They stood there in awkward silence for several moments as Ardis did her best impression of Asterid's imperious expression that she gave whenever a soldier got uppity and disobeyed her commands. Judging by Ash's unimpressed face, it wasn't really working that well.

“Well ‘Ash’, why are you here, then?”

He stared at her. She stared at him.

“To investigate, like I said.”

Ardis was defeated. He had an unbeatable alibi, and it was now clear that she was the one with no right to be here.

“Don't you know it's dangerous? There's some kind of monster in these halls.”

“Really? What does it look like?” Ash said casually, starting to walk down the halls. She followed along, trying to continue their conversation and maybe discover more about his mysterious man.

“Well… I didn't actually see it.” Ardis felt like she was making an utter ass of herself, unable to explain simple things. This guy was  _ good _ . “But it's in the darkness somewhere, and I'm investigating it.”

That was a complete and utter lie, really. She was running  _ away _ from it. Still, she wasn't about to leave the light and be easy prey again.

“I'll keep an eye out for it, I guess.”

Ash tried a random doorknob off to the side, the door opening easily. His sword illuminated the entire room, including its contents.

There was a horrific beast filling the room with its bulk. Massive scything claws swung at its sides, and it looked at them with an eyeless face, dripping maw agape. Most chillingly of all, though, it was the same shade of unnatural darkness that was stalking her in the halls, the same thing she'd seen reflected and slowly snuffing out her light to nothing. From its form dripped darkness that pooled on the floor around, like the shadows that had flitted at the edges of her vision earlier. Even staring directly at it offered no depth or clarity, the light from Ash's sword only letting them see a silhouette against the lit room. It was as if the monster was made of darkness, so absolute that nothing could truly pierce its depths. Those claws were the same things that had torn up the entire fort, she was absolutely sure of it. Panic grappled with terror inside her, being this close to certain death.

Ardis stared at the monster. The monster stared at her (though she couldn't really tell, given its lack of eyes).

Ardis drew her sword, ready to defend herself, but Ash was faster. His sword flared with light at the ready, and he advanced. To everyone's surprise, though, the monster shrank back from the light, backing up farther into the room. Its bulk knocked over a vase, the sound of glass shattering breaking the unnerving quiet. For such a large beast, it made no sound at all.

Then Ash swung the sword with a throaty yell, charging at the monster. The light sunk into the monster, and silently, the monster burst apart into motes of shadow that melted back into the walls.

Ardis held her breath. Ash stood there, sword still ready.

After a minute of nothing else happening and the room looking like a completely ordinary, monster-less office, Ardis stopped holding her breath. She hadn't realized it, but she had just been standing there frozen while Ash struck the monster. Several more minutes ticked by as they stood there in silence, Ash finally lowering his sword after there was no more apparent threat.

“Is that it?”

Ash shrugged. “If it isn't, I'll deal with it.”

Suddenly, it all made sense, the pieces clicking together. Ardis thought that maybe she would have been better off being eaten by the monster after all, and wasted no time in apologizing to her superior.

“I'm so sorry, sir! I thought you were an intruder; I didn't think they would assign someone like you here! When I said I would arrest you, that was a case of mistaken identity.” She bowed her head in remorse, hoping she wouldn't be the one arrested.

“... What? What are you talking about?”

Ardis chanced looking up at his face, which had a bemused expression. The pieces locked just a little closer into place, and she realized that being arrested would be the least of her worries, if she was reading the situation right. Her promotion being gone meant nothing in comparison to the righteous punishment she would be met with if she blabbed about this. There was a good reason she didn't recognize him, why he wielded a powerful magical object with impunity.  _ That _ was the reason he wasn't in any uniform she recognized.  _ That _ was the reason he wasn't wearing any helmet to obscure his features. There were very few people she could think of who could dispatch magical threats like that, and she prayed to the Avatars that she hadn't angered him  _ too _ badly. If she was lucky, she'd come out of this with her skin intact, for disobeying and threatening a high ranking leader of a secret division of the Rose.

“I swear on my honour, sir. Your secret is safe with me.”

High Commander Ash's eyes slid off her, back towards the hallways where they came from. Hopefully that meant he wasn't going to punish her too badly. After all, they were in a secluded location, so that meant she wouldn't be punished for disclosing secrets.

“Well… let's get out of here, then.” He brushed it off casually, so she tried to do the same.

He didn't say anything about investigating any more, so she could only assume that his mission was complete. He didn’t say anything about ruining her career, either, so she was at least a little optimistic on that front.

Ash led the way again, cape sweeping just shy of the floor and sword illuminating the path. This time, though, Ardis kept a respectful distance behind him and thought about how she’d missed all the signs. How could she have thought he was some kind of common criminal? No random person would know the location of a secret Rose fort, or be so confident walking around the dark halls where the monster was just waiting for its next victim. If he didn’t bring up Doctor Kairos, he must have been a casualty, but it also must have meant that Ash was somehow even higher rank. She knew all the high ranking members near Oaklore Keep, but he was an utter mystery. That armour was high quality even to her untrained eye, and was utterly distinctive. He had to have been some kind of leader of a secret elite force. Who else would have been able to easily defeat an Other monster? She could only hope that he wouldn’t hold it against her, that she was impeding his duty as a member of the Rose.

They walked in relative silence for a few more minutes, taking turns and ascending staircases. Ardis broke it first, maybe also breaking propriety, but she had a question that was just begging to be asked.

“How do you know where we’re going?” And as an afterthought, she hastily tacked on, “Sir.”

He had an unreadable expression on her face. Actually, she couldn’t read his expression because his back was to her. He didn’t look back at her, just kept walking down the halls. “Oh, I’m just following the signs.”

They turned another corner, and before she could respond… they were back at the corridor she’d first started. Ardis blinked as she approached the entrance. They were only walking for a few minutes, how did they get back so fast? She was absolutely sure that when she was following her little light by herself, it had taken  _ much _ longer. Still, she wasn’t about to question a superior, especially one with probably secret information gathering techniques that could never be revealed to lower ranking members such as her.

Ardis stood outside, and the sunlight had never been sweeter. It was a lovely warm day out, compared to the heavy chill indoors, and she resisted the urge to spread her arms in the balmy spring weather to bask in the warmth and light. She could save that for later, when no one was watching.

Speaking of which…

The two idiots were gone- horses, prisoner, and all. The cart they were using to transport the prisoner was empty, and the only remaining member of her little team was her own horse, which returned her stare. All that was left of them were two discarded helmets lying in the grass. She really, really didn’t know what she expected from them, and could at least take solace in the fact that this mission was still off the books and she probably wouldn't be reprimanded for losing track of them.

Ardis turned back to Ash, who was watching her. “Thank you for saving me from that monster and getting me out of there, sir! I promise, I won’t breathe a word of your secret to anyone, you have my word.”

“You’re welcome, I guess. You’d better get going, now. I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” he said, gesturing at her lone horse. It eyed him warily and tossed its head.

She stared at him one last time, and tried to burn his image into her memory. Even though he saved her from a probably gory fate, she knew that she would likely never see him again. She’d heard rumours about the secret sub-organizations inside the Rose, of the dangerous and sometimes undercover missions they would carry out. If he was the type of person to explore abandoned facilities and kill Other monsters, he would probably never come to a peaceful place like Oaklore Keep where the rank and file trained. He was like a dashing figure, elaborate silver armour gleaming in the sun, his cape swishing around him in the gentle spring breeze. Even the sword was still radiant in the glow of the sun, the world around it still somehow made brighter by its presence.

Ardis mounted her horse again and gave him a salute. “Thank you!” She called out again, just for good measure, waving at him. She resisted the urge to yell it out again when he waved back.

Once she got back to the Keep, she was going to have the greatest story in the world. Too bad she would never be able to tell it to another soul.

* * *

 

Ash waved back at the Rose soldier until she rode away out of sight, then let out a breath he’d been holding for the past ten minutes. He was just trying to act natural, and half the stuff she’d said went entirely over his head. Still, she promised to keep it all a secret, so that had to count for something.

There were still questions that he still didn’t have answers for, though. The monster had disappeared almost instantly. That wasn’t just out of the norm for anything Other, it was practically the opposite of anything they did- normally they were nearly impossible to kill, but the one he’d fought popped like a soap bubble, like it was nothing more than a shadow. Ardis might have been convinced he’d saved her life, a notion he wasn’t looking to fix anytime soon if it meant he would stay free and not arrested like she’d threatened. He wasn’t so convinced, though, and had the lingering feeling that it wasn’t gone at all. On top of that, he still didn’t know where it came from, or what was even going on inside the facility.

He stepped back inside the facility to go back to looking for clues, a quest that had been interrupted by Ardis, only to have yet another figure stumble right into him from the shadows. That made the second person this day.

“Dragon?” He asked aloud, despite knowing that there was only one person he knew made out of pure shadow. “Did you find anything?”

In response, Dragon steadied himself on Ash with one arm, and with the other arm, pulled out a small book from his pack. He tried to push himself off to stand up properly, and made a valiant attempt at it, but slumped back against him. Ash held him steady with one arm, and accepted the book with his free hand. The cover stated it was a research log, by someone named Doctor Kairos. The name was familiar from something Ardis had said earlier, so it seemed the book really did have answers to their questions. Still, giant shadow monsters and suspicious secret Rose research aside, there was an important question Ash had that still hadn’t been answered yet.

“Are you okay?”

Dragon winced and shot back with a harsh whisper. “Not so loud! I have the worst headache of my life right now.”

He spoke back, this time in a low whisper. “Alright. You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No, I just  _ feel _ like I’m dying.” The sarcasm was what let him know that Dragon was actually fine. “You don’t mind waiting here until it’s less bright out, right?”

Ash stored the book away in his own pack for later reading and patted his friend on the back. On his side, he had to fight a mysterious monster and deal with a member of the Rose thinking he was some kind of organizational leader, so he could only imagine what Dragon had gone through to leave him in this state. Maybe there was a shadow monster over there, too. Either way, they’d both deserved a little bit of a break. Maybe they could take the chance to discuss their findings, so it wouldn’t be that bad. “It’s alright, take your time.”

“Right, right. Could you also maybe… turn off your sword?”

Ash mentally revised his opinion. Actually, this was going to be a long few hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explanation: Dragon decides the best way to chase out random members of the Rose is to create a giant shadow monster so they have something to blame, and don't come across Ash. The “two idiots” were scared away because they heard the metal sound that Ardis heard earlier while Dragon tried to chase them all out, and he then freed their prisoner (some random definitely not plot relevant mage). However, Ardis runs straight into Ash. Dragon hides in a random room so Ash doesn't see him, but unfortunately, Ash finds him first. He tries to awkwardly move away, but Ash pops his giant shadow monster that he worked so hard on. Ardis then thinks that Ash must be a high ranking member of the Rose like Theano or someone, and swears to keep it all a secret. Somehow, it all works out for everyone. Except Dragon, who has a migraine from trying to control a huge shadow puppet and then having it explode because of Ash.


	8. Chapter 8

In the end, they went back to Falconreach. Ash had considered out loud about going on through the forest and seeing what else they could discover, but it was starting to get late out—actually late out, and not just because time was warping madly around an abomination of forbidden magic in the woods. They'd stayed inside the cold facility for several hours—Ash sitting on his sword in an attempt to smother the light a little, and Dragon lying on the ground, too tired to even complain about the state of affairs. It was only when the sky was streaked with pink evening shades that Dragon's pounding headache eventually subsided enough for him to complain about being hungry, and off they went back home.

The trip wasn't very memorable, but that might have been because Dragon spent almost the entire time inside his Umbra, trailing Ash like he was his shadow. At least it was comfortable, being nothing but shapeless shadow in the ever-twisting reflections of time itself, even if Ash did almost trip over him once. He had tried his best to not get in the way or anything, but honestly, he was barely paying attention to the outside world.

He knew he hadn't been a great conversation partner, from what little he remembered about the walk home. Or, well, Ash was the one who walked. Dragon just sort of let himself get pulled along in his wake and didn't put in any of the work, while Ash was hacking down trees with his sword and walking all the way around the stupid cursed forest to get back to Falconreach. He actually didn't even remember crawling back into his bed. There was a vague memory of pouring soup down his throat and Serenity giving him an uncomfortable smile while he stuffed himself on bread, but the entire day was already a blur.

Unpacking all the discoveries of the day could wait for tomorrow, after all. There was a lot to unpack, but that had to wait until a better time. In his warm, cozy bed, it was hard to really think back to his poor life decisions. (Hopefully it was  _ his _ bed. It would be very, very awkward if he accidentally got in someone else's bed, but… he was too comfortable to get out and check.)

That had been at least an hour ago. It was kind of ironic, actually. He was barely awake earlier, and now, back at his room in the inn, he couldn't get to sleep. Lying in his own bed (hopefully) was so comfortable he felt like he was about to drift off, but he wasn't really quite there. If he didn't find something to occupy himself soon, thoughts would probably end up bouncing inside his head for the rest of the night, and that would be a terrible way to spend his first official night back in Falconreach.

It was a lovely night out, still and quiet, and with no giant dragons eating the sun or alien demon dictators threatening to set all of Lore on fire. In his Umbra, it was even more peaceful, within the shapeless void of infinite shadows that embraced him as master. He could vaguely hear the screaming of infinite possibilities that never happened and never would, but it was easy to tune out, and wasn't something that really bothered him.

He was back home in his room after years of being frozen in a block of ice, comfortable and safe in bed after a hard day's work of adventuring. So Dragon couldn't figure out, for the life of him, why he couldn't just get to sleep. He needed to get out of here and take a walk to clear his head. It was still a mystery as to what that was in his head that needed clearing, but he was sure that he would either figure it out, or pass out trying.

Dragon, practitioner of dangerous forbidden magic, Hero of Falconreach, chosen human of prophecy, tumbled out of his bed in a tangle of limbs and sheets, right onto the hardwood floor. He let out a faint groan and collected his dignity for a moment, choosing to stare through the window like it was what he planned all along.

It was a beautiful view of Falconreach from the second floor of the inn, partly why he liked this room so much despite so many other offers in other towns. The moon shone down from a cloudless night sky. It was a clear night out, and even better, he couldn't see any Rose members patrolling the streets like during the day. The only light as far as the eye could see were the moon, the stars, and the occasional softly glowing lamp or window. It was a perfect night to go out and about and then regret in the morning.

He slipped into his Umbra, through the crack under his door, and down the stairs.

It was a brisk night out despite the earlier heat, and he took a moment to stand outside the entrance and just breathe in the crisp air.

Dragon had always liked the night, even before he became a literal entity made of shadows with perfect night vision. There was something that made the world a little more mysterious and exciting, even if a little bit of that mystery and excitement was ruined by being able to see into the darkness with perfect clarity.

Something compelled him to just wander around and take in the almost familiar sight of his town, walking down the streets in silence. All the same shops were there, in the center of the town, but he hadn't had the chance to look any further, between getting his bearings and then adventuring around with Ash. He deliberately avoided Cysero's shop, though, since he wouldn't put it past the mage to mess with him even at this time of night.

A few magical creatures gave him strange glances and suspicious looks, but didn’t move against him, giving him a wide berth. He didn't remember them being out earlier in the day, but supposed it made sense. After all, he couldn't have been the only one to realise there were no Rose members patrolling.

Something about the town looked nicer and newer than he remembered. Of course, his last memories of Falconreach were of it burning years ago, so that was already a low bar, but the buildings seemed less worn. There were probably fewer monster attacks on the town, and Ash didn't mention anything about more giant dragons, so he could probably assume there weren't any of those around, either. Even in the daytime, nobody looked particularly scared for their lives or seemed like they were unsafe in the streets. Most people didn't even seem bothered by the Rose, passing by them without a care in the world and sometimes even greeting them with smiles.

Dragon took a moment to sit down at a bench. A few fairies near the bench hovered in place, then flew off to be farther away from him. That was fine, and it could give him some space to think. He didn't really  _ want _ to spend his time thinking this late at night, but it was honestly eating at him, and there really wasn't going to be any better time to have some time alone in relative peace.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, lowering his head into his hands. Every time he looked at a recently planted tree or newly built building, it reminded him of the last time he'd been in Falconreach. The town had been declining for months, even before he was frozen. Monster attacks were almost constant, and few volunteered to fight them outside of him and the Guardians. Magical attacks against them failed, and mages either disappeared into the night or were ostracized and suspected of being practitioners of forbidden magic, and that was all even before Wargoth came and set the world on fire. The last he'd ever seen of Falconreach, before his desperate attempt to jump away, were smoke and fire consuming the town. It was hard to reconcile that image: the town burning and screaming only days before, and the peaceful place he was in now. They'd had years to recover, but for him, it was like barely any time had passed. There were still reminders, whenever he passed by a rebuilt shop or the burnt husk of a tree, but it was still hard to imagine that this was the same place he'd seen days ago.

The Rose patrolling around didn't help that image, either. There didn't seem to be many of them, but he'd stayed out of their sights whenever possible. The citizenry didn't seem to mind, 

While he wanted to believe the Falconreach he knew would never bend a knee to an organization looking to stomp out magic, he knew full well about the anti-magic sentiments that had been brewing. Dragon knew he was sometimes too trusting, but he wasn't blind, and he knew what the people of his town thought.

He also knew that many of the people of his town hated him, and it still stung, even though the only reason he'd ever taken on this power was to save them. The town was obviously still fine, even after he'd been frozen for years—maybe even better, in fact. That brought him to the question… what was he going to do about the Rose? Did he even have any right to do anything about the Rose, seeing that they seemed to have everything under control?

“Hi mister! Are you okay?”

He looked up at the sound of a new voice. In front of him was a pink moglin, fur bright against the surrounding darkness. Dragon blinked at her.

“Um. I'm fine, I guess.”

“You sure you're not hurt? I can use my moglin healing magic on you!” The moglin gestured at him with her staff, which had a little green stone at the end. It actually reminded him of Warlic's staff, a little bit. That is, if Warlic's staff was a lot smaller and Warlic was a bright pink moglin.

That wasn't a mental image he wanted. “No, I'm definitely fine.”

“Oh.” She seemed to deflate a little, and Dragon somehow felt bad that he wasn't injured. “Do you want to walk with me, then?”

Company sounded nice. He hadn't really talked with anyone other than Ash and Serenity since escaping, so now was as good of a time as any to make new friends. He rose from the bench and smiled down at her. “Sure, lead the way!”

The smile she gave him was radiant, and she turned around, pointing her staff at the path ahead.

“Let's go to my favourite place in all of Falconreach!”

Dragon moved to follow her, but she spun around and pointed her staff up at him.

“Wait! You're new to Falconreach, right? I have to show you around!”

“I, er, wouldn't say I'm new…” He saw the moglin's expression fall, and quickly added on, “I haven't been here in years, though! A tour would be great!”

The moglin perked back up, and did an adorable little twirl with her staff. Dragon had to fight the urge to just hug her, instead settling for a broad smile that was probably impossible to see in the dark. She extended a paw to him, and he kneeled down to shake her paw, the urge to hug her only intensifying. He had an iron will though, and the smile on his face just grew a little more strained.

“I'm Annapurna! Nice to meet you!”

“My name is Dragon. Nice to meet you, too!”

Annapurna skipped in front of him, gesturing at the road forward. “Okay, let's go! I'll show you everything I love about Falconreach!”

They walked back the way Dragon just came from, but he wasn't about to just tell her that.

"This is the road that everyone takes! You know the saying 'all roads lead to Falconreach'? It's true, but this is the biggest one!" Annapurna gestured down the road, illuminated by magical lamps and the glow of strange flowers that coiled around trees. "See, there's the auction house! It's been closed since forever, but I think they'll open soon!"

Dragon thought about how years ago, the auction house was closed and they had him do errands for rare items. He somewhat doubted they would open anytime soon, but didn't say that out loud.

"Cool," he opted to say instead.

Annapurna seemed to agree, at least. "All the other magical creatures come out at night, too, so it's the perfect time to walk around Falconreach!"

She waved at a ribald, who didn't seem to notice her at all. Dragon waved at him too, just  to try to be friendly. It didn't really seem like he noticed him, either.

"It's the first time I've seen you around," the moglin continued, pointing at the Falconreach Inn. "You should stop by the inn sometime, too! Serenity's the innkeeper, and she's really nice. If you come around later when the sun rises, she bakes really good bread!"

"That does sound nice," Dragon agreed, thoughts drifting off to warm bread. "Maybe we can get bread together later."

Annapurna swished her staff, and turned around to poke him in the chest with it. "No skipping ahead! We have to finish the tour first."

Dragon hadn't realized it, but he had stopped walking (well, floating) and was standing in front of the Inn while lost in fantasies about food.  He was once again glad that blushes wouldn't show in his shadows. "Sorry, lead the way."

Annapurna turned back around and started walking again, Dragon following dutifully behind. "There's Lim's weapon shop! He's kinda scary, but he's actually nice! There's a moglin named Lime who works for him, and he even scared away the Rose once by talking about science to them."

She spun around and pointed east, over at Cysero's shop. "And that's where Cysero's shop is! He's funny, but he kind of scares me, too. I think he's best friends with Lim, so he can't be too scary."

They took a moment and started walking toward southern Falconreach. Dragon noted there were even more magical creatures here: a water elf sleeping next to the river, a goatdrake eating flowers by a produce stand, and a gaggle of minx fairies conspiring in a group. The minx fairies turned to watch as they passed by, and Dragon couldn't help but move just a little faster to get out of their sight. He didn't know if they still held a grudge against him for beating up so many of their kind to gather potion reagents, and he wasn't really eager to find out. It was a good thing he had Annapurna to fill the air with friendly chatter, even though he already knew his town fairly well.

"Do the Rose come by here often?" He couldn't help himself from asking, thinking back to the few stray soldiers he'd seen patrolling during the daytime. It didn't seem like there were any out at the moment, but that would probably change soon.

"Hmm…. They come around here during the day, but they usually leave before nightfall. My friends said they're too scared to come out at night, so all us magical creatures get to do whatever we want then!" Annapurna did a pirouette and waved her staff in a burst of magic sparkles. "Some humans like to talk to us too, but most of them are usually asleep, and when they're awake, we're asleep or in the forest…."

"That's cool!" He didn't really want to ask, but there was a question eating at him that he really wanted answered. "What happens to the magical creatures who stay out at daytime and meet the Rose?"

For several long moments, the moglin didn't respond. Just as they crossed over a series of stones that served as a bridge over the river, she spoke up again.

"Oh look, we're almost at my favourite spot in all of Falconreach!"

That wasn't a subtle at all change of topic, but he didn't press any harder on the subject. It wasn't like he seriously needed to know that information, and more importantly, he didn't want to damage his newfound friendship. He could probably just bother Ash about it later, if he remembered. Besides, he had the feeling that if he fought against the Rose, he'd find out some way or other, sooner or later.

They entered a clearing illuminated by the soft glow of magic flowers, and a wave of nostalgia hit Dragon as he stared up at a familiar statue.

Annapurna leapt up without a care in the world, and sat down on the platform of Warlic's memorial statue. She laid her staff to rest against the stone robes. It probably would have been disrespectful and callous if it were any one of the other memorial statues scattered throughout Falconreach, but Warlic got better in the end. That seemed to make it even out. At any rate, the little moglin seemed like she didn't have a care in the world, perched on her fancy stone seat.

"I like hanging out here! No one ever checks here during the day, so it's a great place to practice magic!"

Dragon took a seat as well, on the soft and inviting grass. It really didn't seem like anyone came here often, but the statue still seemed well maintained nonetheless. He could honestly see why Annapurna liked this place so much; there was honestly something magical about the secluded little clearing. He smoothed down his robes and leaned back to stare up at the night sky through the trees. "So… you said you were practicing magic, right?"

"That's right! I want to be a great mage like Warlic! He's my hero, so I come here every single day to be just like him!" She struck a dramatic pose with her staff. "One day, I even want to show the Rose that they're big meanies and protect all my friends!"

A lot of things clicked then. The mental image from earlier of Warlic as a small pink moglin again came to mind, which he tried to squash down. Even if that was basically what Annapurna was trying to become, it still wasn't a mental image he appreciated. That would mean that  _ Wargoth _ would also be a moglin, and…. He mentally shook the ideas from his head. It was time to talk to his new friend, not time for thinking of disturbing concepts. Instead of saying any of his thoughts out loud, he settled for something safe.

"That's pretty cool! I like magic, too!"

To his surprise, Annapurna leapt down from the statue again and hopped up right next to where he was sitting in the grass. "You seem like you know some magic! Can you show me any cool spells?!"

"I, uh…"

— _ darkness spreading across the sky, the sun swallowed up by the maw of an otherworldly tyrant _

_ the entire world torn apart, ravaged by the maw of uthuluc and time itself sundered _

_ fire engulfing a town, burning it to a husk by the hand of a former friend _

_ a ritual never practiced before, tearing at a broken bond, reaching for the aching emptiness of nothing, drowning in contradiction until he was of the same thing that stole away his partner _

_ choking on ice and breath that wouldn't come, magic that wouldn't spark against numb fingertips _

_ screaming from the future that never was, infinite reflections of the things that every timeline hid in its shadows, contradictions that writhed and screeched and longed to exist— _

"... I don't really think here is a good place to practice the magic I know. I'm not really good at it, so maybe another time?"

Annapurna seemed a little disappointed, and hopped back up to the statue. Instead of sitting down again, though, she scurried around it to rummage at something behind Warlic.

"I have just the thing! I keep them in a stash when I'm practicing magic, let me just find where they are…."

Dragon looked on, bemused. "Where what are, exactly?"

She emerged from behind the statue, a pile of pink somethings cupped between her paws. "Fresh spellberries! Hold out your hands, please!"

Annapurna walked up to him and spilled some of the pink things into his outstretched hands. On closer inspection, they really were small pink berries that glistened even through the darkness. "Thanks! So… what are spellberries?"

"Since you said you're not good at magic, you should eat them! All the great mages eat them, so you'll get stronger!"

He looked down at the spellberries dubiously, but took a bite anyway.

The berries were sweet, tasted a little tart, but the flavour wasn't what mattered.

A jolt of power ran through his system, like his magic reserves were expanded all of a sudden. They tasted not quite like mana, but what would happen if some berries were watered with mana instead of water. There must have been a surprised expression on his face, since Annapurna was giggling at him. Then he took another bite, knowing what to expect now. They actually did taste pretty good when he focused on the flavour, sweet and tangy like something he would eat for dessert, so he put the remaining berries in a small pouch. Maybe he could eat them for breakfast in the morning.

"Thanks! I'll save these for later."

His conversation partner finished off her own berries. "You're welcome! I pick them all by myself, since all the great mages find their own reagents."

Dragon thought back to Warlic, her role model, and how the mage kept sending him on quests to gather samples. There was that time when he was hatching Human and he had to gather all the ingredients for summoning the Doomkitten… that time Xan was destroying Lymcrest and Warlic sent him to gather samples… that time Ash was trying to rescue his sword-princess and Warlic wanted them to gather reagents for him….

Instead of shattering an innocent little moglin's dreams and belief in her idol, he gave her a smile and said, "That's great! I think if you keep practicing, you might even be a better mage than Warlic!"

She smiled back at him, before her face morphed into something more apologetic. "So, I thought you were great at magic at first, since you look like a magical being. I'm sorry if I made you feel bad!"

He was slightly at a loss for words, and actually felt bad again. "That's okay; you didn't really hurt my feelings."

They sat in companionable silence for a few moments, staring up at the night sky twinkling with stars.

"So… what you anyway?" Annapurna broke the silence again.

"Huh?" Dragon eloquently responded.

"Well, you're out at night like all the other magical creatures, but I've never really seen anyone like you before." She looked at him, seemingly contemplative. "Are you a dark elf? I heard they like to be secretive! You seem like you could be an elf, can I see your ears?"

He couldn't help the laugh that escaped him, even though Annapurna seemed indignant. "No, I'm not an elf. I'm a…."

Dragon wanted to answer honestly, but was paralyzed for a moment. Questions like this weren't supposed to be hard to answer, were they? He knew plenty of mages who ended up corrupted by their magic to be something other than human, and he almost definitely counted as one of those. Magic raised so many hard questions, and he probably didn't want to mention forbidden magic to explain why he looked very distinctly not-human if he claimed to be just a baseline human. Plus, he hadn't considered himself just a mage in a very long time, so that didn't seem like a fitting label either. He was lots of things, even if some of those things didn't apply to him anymore. He settled for the simplest answer he could, given what she seemed curious about.

"I guess you can call me a shadow walker. And you're right, I am sort of magical." An idea rose up, and he internally laughed. "Hey, want to see a trick I can do?"

"Sure!" Annapurna scooted a little closer, legs dangling over the edge of her platform.

Without any warning, he launched down into his Umbra. She shrieked in surprise before he reformed a few feet away.

"Wow, that's cool! Let me show you my magic, too!"

The replica of Warlic's staff started to glow: softly at first, then brighter than all the lights around them combined. Annapurna waved her staff, and a cloud of pink sparkles formed in its wake. They billowed over Dragon in a cloud, and as the sparks of magic settled down on his skin, he felt rejuvenated by the moglin healing magic. That is… until he breathed in a stray mote of magic by accident.

"ACHOO!"

Annapurna giggled. "Oops!"

He took a moment to collect himself, making sure not to breathe in any other sparks of magic, before giving her a smile. "That was really cool! I can definitely see you being an amazing mage someday."

Annapurna smiled at him and leaned back against the statue. "Thanks, I've been working on that for a super long time! I need to fix the part where it makes people sneeze, but I'm working on that."

They sat in companionable silence for a while, before Dragon yawned. He summoned his weapons with a wave of his hand and a burst of shadow, and they floated at the ready. If they could be trusted, it was three hours past midnight, meaning their little tour took longer than he'd thought. Then again, he knew he couldn't really trust them. Either way, he dismissed them and it was probably late enough that sleep was a good idea.

Dragon stood up and stretched, waving to Annapurna. "I have to go now. It was nice meeting you!"

She waved back, calling out, "Bye Dragon! Come by my spot again sometime!"

And to the young moglin's surprise and delight, Dragon dove into his own shadow with a swirl of darkness, and the shadow sank down into itself until he was gone entirely.

Back in his own room, Dragon rose from his Umbra and immediately dropped back into his bed, suddenly feeling the full force of his exhaustion from adventuring the whole day. At least he made a new friend that he could visit whenever he felt the need to stay up late at night again. A smile ghosted his lips, and he relaxed back down into his Umbra. It was nice to have friends.

With that thought lingering in his mind, he fell asleep, dead to the world.

* * *

She breathed in, then out. The mana around her thrummed, and her own heartbeat slowed, matching the inescapable pattern in front of her. It was, and was not. It was a reflection of itself, like a nexus chained behind glass.

In front of her, the mirror reflected only its own surface. She knew this, even with her eyes closed. There were senses other than sight—the endless depths of the mirror, her own magic crystallized in fractals of fractals, the always present ambient mana resonant throughout Lore. She breathed in slowly, and breathed out deeply, focusing with clarity and purpose. This time, it would be right. Her thoughts cleared away into a razor's edge of conviction, resonating through her magic with purpose.

The mirror was never wrong, but it showed truths other than the truth. That was something she learned with pain and experience, and she had the burn scars to show for it.

As if in prayer, she kneeled. It wasn't necessary, and she was not a religious woman by any means. Still, there was something almost sacred about the artifact, a glimpse of something perhaps higher, something that demanded its own respect. It waited in front of her, ever-silent and ever-watching. She only needed to ask.

"Show me a world where I succeed," she breathed, half into air and half into magic.

Jaania opened her eyes.

In front of her was a mirror, perfectly smooth. There was nothing reflected in it, not even her own haggard countenance. It only ever reflected itself, and at the moment, there was nothing. It was a mirror that exactly reflected a mirror reflecting a mirror, with no care for what actually stood before it.

Standing up with a stretch and a sigh, Jaania thought. Every single time she tried asking what would happen once she went through with her plan, the mirror refused to respond. It was aggravating, going forward without a concrete plan or expected course of action. While the mirror led her to answers and helped her get into Alteon's good graces, it never responded to what would happen at the end of her ultimate plan. The mirror told her everything she wanted to know about the past and the future in potentia. It was the reason she'd made it so far, crushed even whispers of resistance by searching for futures where she was overthrown. Countless traitors were found out, their plans foiled by visions of worlds where she was betrayed. However, there was only one question she had that it would never answer, and it was the most important of all.

Next time she went to the mirror for counsel, she could ask again, and hope for an answer.

There was also the possibility that the mirror simply could not show her what she wanted to see. A theory had bubbled in the corners of her mind for years now, dark and unappealing, yet undeniably possible. If she was right, the mirror's magic was some kind of external source, unable to connect through a world where she succeeded in raising the barrier.

She had to be right. Even the possibility of her being wrong was unacceptable. 

There had to be a future where she succeeded, somewhere out there.


	9. Chapter 9

Dragon woke up, knowing 2 things with absolute certainty:

  1. He had to find out more about the Rose, and what they were doing in Falconreach.
  2. He shouldn't have stayed up that late, and was really feeling it now.



The sun was shining bright and cheerful, unfortunately also blinding him by shining right in his eyes. From the looks of it, it was mid-morning already, and he'd definitely slept past breakfast. He was already tempted to just crawl under the covers, bury himself in thr comfort of his Umbra, and sleep the entire day away—but no, he had to actually figure out what was going on with the Rose and hopefully stop them. It was the least he could do for all the magical creatures who were forced into nocturnal sleep schedules. A night of no sleep wouldn't kill him, and he knew for a fact that ribalds were normally diurnal. Maybe that was why so many creatures acted so standoffish, considering how he felt at the moment. And… that meant he had to get out of bed.

Being a hero was so, so hard sometimes.

With a groan, he slowly rose from his Umbra and rolled out of bed, blankets falling down in a tangle around him as he lay on the floor in a heap. He wallowed for a few minutes, contemplating his own suffering.

On second thought, this wasn't so bad. Maybe he could afford to take a nap for just a few more minutes before he got up for the day….

"Just a few more minutes," he mentally noted, and his eyes drifted shut once more, back into blissful slumber.

It was really, really bright out. He tried to burrow his face into his pillow, but it wasn't there.

Dragon woke up, reluctant the whole way through, and opened his eyes. Even after his "short nap", he was cramped up and somehow still exhausted. He craned his aching neck up to look at the window, which was further away than it should have been. It seemed to be late afternoon, the sun low in the sky, and for some reason, he was lying on the hard ground, right next to his comfortable bed. His sheets were in a tangle around him, in terrible knots that he'd probably regret later. That was a problem for the future, though. It was almost tempting to just lie down again in the comforting embrace of his Umbra and a few extra blankets, but he couldn't actually just sleep the day away. (Tempting, though.) He had to get up so he could actually investigate the Rose and get them out of his town, after all. It was what he was going to do before he went back to sleep, and he raked his mind for memories. Something something magical creatures, or something. Maybe something about trying to figure out a recipe for spellberry bread? He couldn't really remember exactly what he was thinking before he fell asleep.

… Spellberry bread was a promising idea, though. Maybe Serenity would have some ideas, but to talk to Serenity, he’d have to get out of bed (or off the floor, in this case).

With a groan, he rose to his feet, shadows swirling around him to reform into his robes. His mind dredged up memories of talking to his new friend under the moon, and the fact that the Rose was the reason magical beings weren't allowed to have a regular sleep schedule. That included himself now, actually. It meant that he knew exactly who was responsible, and he knew exactly who to blame.

Jaania would  _ pay _ .

He thought back to Ash, who was probably acting as the town's defender, and almost felt bad… but eh, he was probably used to it by now. A few more days wouldn't hurt, considering it was a job he'd been doing for years, now. Wasn't  _ that  _ a weird thought?

Throwing a few spellberries into his mouth as a pretend breakfast, Dragon slid down into his Umbra.

He reappeared next to Warlic's statue, which was still gazing solemnly into the distance, albeit with a few more berry stains than he remembered. The sun was low in the sky, inching down the horizon, but Annapurna was nowhere to be seen. He sat down on the statue's pedestal, but it seemed like he was alone. The trees rustled in the wind around him, but there were no friendly moglins in sight.

Dragon waited around for a few moments, but it seemed like she was out. Hopefully that meant she was gathering spellberries or something, and not being captured by the Rose. The sun hadn't completely set, so they could be still patrolling, and if they happened to find an innocent moglin practicing magic in Falconreach….

He tried to clear his head of the thought. There was a good chance she was off sleeping somewhere or just collecting more spellberries, or maybe even just visiting her other magical creature friends. Nothing at all suggested that anything untoward like that had happened, so he shoved the idea into a dark box in his mind.

Whatever the reason, there really wasn't anything to do other than go back out to explore nighttime Falconreach, so he set back on the road. The weather was nice out, so he resolved to take the long way instead of shadowwalking. It had been years, after all.

He hopped over a few stones that served as the bridge across the river that cut through town, and... immediately slipped on the wet surface. Spending the barest hint of mana, he managed to float and catch himself in midair. The river gurgled below his feet, as if disappointed it wasn't able to claim another victim. Dragon glared down at the water, which responded with the distorted glare of his own reflection. Just to spite it, he floated the rest of the way, landing on the other side in peace. That landed him right next to a main road, and also startled a fairy, who flew off into the distance in a flurry of sparkles and indistinct curses. He didn't pay her any mind, and instead kept going. Fairies usually seemed to be temperamental at best, anyway.

Dragon looked up at the sky, and some part of him noted he'd been asleep for quite a long while. It was late evening, meaning it was going to be an ordeal to fix his sleep schedule if he ever wanted to see daylight again.

He shoved the thought out of his mind, and continued walking through Falconreach. One thing at a time.

The sun dipped low, past the trees, and the sky, and he followed its path by walking down the roads of Falconreach. It seemed like hardly anyone was awake, most windows dark and lamps unlit.

Eventually, the trees thinned, and he sat down, near the Guardian Tower. It was the highest point in Falconreach, and had an amazing view. His feet dangled off the cliff's edge, and the cool wind tousled his hair. Above him, the sky was streaked in purples and pinks. This was… nice.

He hadn't really stopped to see the sunset in a long time—years, in fact. Even before he was frozen, it wasn't like he was able to just sit down and watch time pass. There was always another issue, always another problem like a dragon to fight or an otherworldly menace threatening to destroy the world. Even when the world wasn't in imminent danger, there was always something to  _ do _ , whether it was questing to help someone out or training to defeat the next major threat. Now, though, it almost felt like he had all the time in the world. Lore had done fine without him for years, like the world had just passed him by. He wasn't sure how to feel about that, shouldering the burden of saving the world for years, then disappearing and the world just went on anyway. Was he disappointed? relieved? It was hard to tell, but at least it meant there was time now for him to sit back and relax for the first time in years. No one was in any imminent danger, after all.

The last time he stopped to just sit down and enjoy the sunset was…. Well it was a long time ago. He was a lot younger, then.

Finally, the sun finished its descent across the horizon. In its place, nighttime Falconreach started to rise. Around his feet, strange flowers bloomed and lit up the night with glowing lights of all hues, and when he looked down to the town of Falconreach proper, lamps started to light up one by one. He knew that somewhere out there, there was a portal to Ravenloss, purple runes coming to life in the night. Seeing all the different lights put a smile on his face, and even though no one was there to share it with him tonight, he was content for a moment.

Just for a moment, though. Jaania was still leading the Rose, and he had a world to save.

He climbed to his feet, trying not to fall off the cliff this time. There were still things he needed to learn. Ash was nice, a truly good friend, but he still couldn't shake his mental image of the kid who handed off letters and only occasionally quested with him. He had to do his own independent investigations if he wanted a chance at figuring anything out at all. Taking some time to see the sunset was nice at the time, but it really distracted him from his main goals, and how he had to catch up on years of events. There were still people to meet, places to go, and all better done sooner than later.

Letting his Umbra bloom around him in a pool, he prepared to shadowwalk to anywhere that he could get answers from. Still, he couldn't help but feel like he forgot something.

"Dragon!"

A voice called out to him, disrupting his concentration. His eyes snapped open, blazing with blue fire, and then widened in surprise at the sight. Ahead of him was a water elf, running toward him. Although she was bigger and more scarred than he remembered, with a proud crown of coral circling her head, he still recognized her. She slowed as she approached, until she was standing right in front of him.

"Aquella?"

She gave him a smile that was filled with sharp adult teeth. Distantly, he noted that she was taller than him now, towering above him by a head. It made her sharp teeth seem a lot more intimidating, now that she wasn’t a child anymore. "You've been gone for a long time, Dragon."

"I have. You look… different." He finished the sentence lamely. There was nothing else he could think of saying. It was strange seeing her as an adult, and suddenly he regretted never visiting her for long after the problems with the Water Orb were settled. She did look different, and what else was he supposed to say? Was he supposed to apologize for being gone for so long that she grew up and a megalomaniac was trying to end magic? Would a corny joke be a good way to break the ice, or was that too soon? Actually, making any jokes about "breaking the ice" were definitely too soon, and that was a topic he would prefer to avoid altogether. Maybe he was supposed to engulf her in some sort of parental reunion hug, even though she was clearly an adult and also her parents were restored to their former bodies. Did water elves hug? Come to think of it, he'd never seen a water elf hug anyone, but also come to think of it, the only water elf he'd really interacted was Aquella. Maybe he should ask first, if hugs were a thing underwater, or maybe—

"As do you. Things might seem different, but they always stay the same." Aquella cut off his internal musings, and he really didn't like the sound of that last part she said. "It's not safe to talk about it here, so you should come down below if you're willing to hear me out. You're the only surface-dweller we trust."

He couldn't help but notice how she was muscled and defined, like the lithe power of a shark. Hopefully it wasn't creepy or anything for him to stare at her like that, but his eyes kept being drawn to the scars on her body. They were old and healed, knotted and twisting over her limbs in faint curves.

"We?"

"The water elves." When she spoke, faint lines on her neck opened into gills with each word, like they were searching for water. "We wouldn't forget our saviour, after all. Even if other surface-dwellers would try to hunt us down, you're always welcome in our waters."

Dragon tugged on the garment that draped around his own neck, and thought back to his exploits with the Water Orb.

Kathool in his dreams, in his mind. Whispers in his thoughts until he didn’t know where Dragon ended and where Kathool Achoo started. Painful tugging at every fibre of his being until the only thoughts in his mind were  _ submit _ and  _ bring me the girl _ . Waking up in a haze, like he was swimming through muck, trying to even conceive of a thought that went against Kathool's pervasive orders. He was drowning, in a way water breathing potions couldn't help, and twisted madness threatened to consume him entirely. Even when Kathool was defeated, the nightmares continued, and he wasn't sure if those were his own or not. Whispers trailed every thought he had for weeks afterward, every idea chased by the shadowy visage of his dream self. (Ironic, actually.)

"I… wouldn't really call myself a saviour. You did all the work, after all."

Aquella gave a short, sharp laugh. "Don't sell yourself short. We both know you're the one who defeated Kathool in the end, along with your dragon."

"Thanks, I guess." Dragon really didn't know how to respond to the undeserved praise, and just thinking of his past adventures with Human made his heart ache. He tried to subtly nudge the subject away. "Did you want to talk to me just to pass this on?"

Thankfully, Aquella didn't push it any further. She shook her head. "No, there are… problems. I don't want to go into it up here where they can hear, but I…  _ we— _ need your assistance. The Rose constantly causes problems along the shore at day, so it's a miracle I even found you at a time we could talk."

Dragon really, sincerely didn't mean to be rude or insensitive, but his mouth moved before his brain, as per usual. "Is that where you got those scars?"

Thankfully, Aquella took it in good sport. She gave him a fierce grin that was all teeth. "No, they don't come under the water anymore. That's where they got  _ their _ scars. These are from monsters."

"Ah," Dragon said. "I'm guessing you don't mean monsters like the Rose being metaphorical monsters because of their goals, right?"

Aquella gave him a fond smile. It suddenly struck him that while he'd only really talked to Aquella for a few months (most of those in a nightmare haze), she'd known him for most of her life. He'd never even really interacted with the other water elves, since they were busy rebuilding their society and all, and then he never actually visited her because they’d both gone their old ways. Should he have brought a gift basket or something?

"I look forward to getting to know the real you, Dragon," she said, stepping forward and putting one cold hand on his shoulder. He could feel the water seeping through his robes. "Let's go. Don't worry, the water breathing potion is still in effect."

She gave him a light tug in the general direction of Falconreach Bay, and Dragon's thoughts fizzled out like a miscast spell.

"Wait, like right now?"

Aquella turned, and for a moment he saw the queen of the ocean, jagged coral crown shadowed against the moonlight. Her lips parted, pointed teeth gleaming in the strange light of Falconreach night. Then he saw Aquella again, the little girl who was staring at him in confusion and disappointment and surprise, the moment when she realised he was one of Kathool’s thralls. Then he blinked, and Aquella, the real grown-up Aquella of the present, was frowning at him.

"Of course right now. Like I said, the Rose watch the shores during day. There's no better time than now, so I can explain everything to you."

The matter-of-fact way she said it left no room for argument, and Dragon knew she was right. Looked like he wouldn't get any more chances to watch the sunset for a while. With a sigh, he reached into his bag for an Energy weapon. His hand reached into empty air instead.

Oh, so that's what he forgot.

"I… uh… don't have any of my gear," Dragon said, squirming under Aquella's steadily increasing glare. Without any of his normal gear on hand, he felt weirdly naked and vulnerable, especially when there was an angry water elf staring him down. "If you don't mind, I'm going to just grab that real quick…"

He slunk down into his Umbra, shadowwalking away to his room in the Falconreach Inn, still followed by Aquella's unfaltering glare. So much for taking the long way home.

Back in his room, Dragon opened up his backpack, and put a hand in to feel around. Then he stuck his arm in. Then he properly looked inside, and found that his backpack was mostly filled with snacks and some random pieces of enchanted jewelry. Putting them on made him feel better, but there still weren't any Energy weapons in his backpack for dealing with all the monsters in the Locker.

With a shrug, he popped one of the snacks into his mouth and slung the backpack into his Umbra, which swallowed it up without complaint. There were more things in his closet, and he could always just dig through there.

Dragon opened up the closet door, and dozens of weapons proceeded to spill out to the floor, kicking up a cloud of dust. He tossed aside a few priceless artifacts and legendary weapons, all covered in dust from disuse. Most of them were probably supposed to be in the Falconreach Bank, like the glaive he got at someone's birthday party that one time, or the weapon Yulgar forged him for defeating some big threat or another. He remembered cleaning out his backpack before being frozen, but it seemed that he never got around to bringing them around to the bank to be properly stored. Ankle deep in various staves and wands and scythes, Dragon despaired at his own lack of organization. There were fire weapons that ignited at his touch and starting to melt through the floor, and light weapons that lit up with blinding light when they clattered around, but there were so many of them he couldn't find out where he put those weapons he looted from Sir Jing's chest ages ago.

They sparked with magical static energy, enough that when he held them, it would make his hair stand on end, so it should have been easy to find. If they were in the pile, though, they were lost below the dozen other sparkling and gleaming magical weapons, all probably leaking residual magic into the floorboards. (He really hoped it wouldn’t cause a leak or anything.)

Great. Perfect. He kicked a few weapons into his closet, most of which were random junk he shouldn't have been keeping around in the first place. There would be time to clean everything out properly later. Maybe after he got frozen for another few years. That was something that would probably give some motivation.

Also on the floor were his blanket and sheets, all tangled up from sleeping on the floor earlier. Dragon had a vague memory of rolling around on the floor dreaming about being a hot dog, and mentally groaned. That was another thing to take care of, then. He gathered it all up in a heap to put on his bed, not ready to deal with it at the moment, and then saw what was on his bed, something that wasn’t sheets. Dragon froze.

On his bed was a paper note, written in an unfamiliar hand. Green ink shimmered with magic, and the feeling of dread only intensified when he read what was written.

_ "We have heard of your exploits, emissary. Our goals may be in parallel against Jaania for now, but do not make the mistake of calling us allies. _

_ "If you truly aren't as hollow as your nature would suggest, then know that would be in your best interests to avoid us." _

He read the note, over and over again. Answers wouldn't come, though, and the magic on the note didn't seem like it was containing any deeper message. It wasn't signed or anything, so he had absolutely no idea who would have sent it. Even the actual contents just made him more and more confused, and he only actually understood half of it. The other half just kept raising more and more questions. The "emissary" was probably supposed to be him. An emissary of what, though? How was he hollow? Was it a case of mistaken identity?

Glancing around his room, the window was closed, and it didn't  _ seem _ like anyone had been in his room. Certainly the mystery person hadn't looted anything from his closet. (That would have saved a lot of time, actually. If all his stuff was stolen, he wouldn't have to categorize everything or have to carry it to the bank.) Maybe it was intended for some other person working against Jaania…?

Dragon had his doubts about the intelligence of whoever it was, anyway. If he didn't know who wrote it, how was he supposed to know who he was supposed to avoid? Were villains getting dumber, or was it just him?

Probably best to just keep it out of mind. Maybe he could show the note to someone sometime later and ask if the handwriting seemed familiar. 

With a shrug, he opened his backpack back up and geared up.

His (unfortunately non-Energy) weapons materialized by his sides, ready for action. He slid a mess of enchanted jewelry out of one compartment of his backpack, and a ring vibrated angrily at him, like it was upset at being unused for so long. Just to spite it, he didn't put it on, and put it down. That would teach it a lesson about respect. Even if it  _ was _ aligned with Water and would be very useful in the depths of the Locker, that didn't mean he was going to let a piece of jewelry just boss him around like that! He even made a show of putting on a different piece of expensive Soulforged jewelry, whose purple gem glinted with smug satisfaction in the direction of the ring. The ring’s gem dulled, as if disappointed.

Dragon studiously ignored the social dynamics of his accessories, and looked into a mirror mounted on the wall to preen. He frowned at his own featureless reflection, which was one undifferentiated shadow from which no light could escape—a  _ messy _ shadow from which no light could escape. Where was his comb?

It was almost an hour later when he finally remembered he told Aquella it was going to be quick.


End file.
